62 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
from Stockbridge had aroused the world. As Henry Field 
phrased it, Cyrus Field woke up famous. 
Part of the excitement arose from the unexpectedness of 
the news. If the success had come a year before, or even a 
month before, the public would have been somewhat pre- 
pared. But nearly everybody had concluded that the efforts 
were doomed to fail and that Field was pursuing a forlorn 
hope. 
To show the impact of the glad news, in staid Boston a 
hundred guns were fired on the sacred Common, and the bells 
of the city were rung for an hour. In New York people flocked 
into the streets and broke into an uproar of rejoicing. These 
seaboard cities realized the immense advantages that an ocean 
cable to Europe would bring them. Similar outbursts of re- 
joicing took place in all parts of the country after Field’s tele- 
gram from Newfoundland at noon of August 5 announced to 
the Associated Press in New York that the expedition had 
succeeded. 
At that period, electricity was still a mysterious and won- 
derful force. People were awed by successful manifestations 
of it. Some of them, like Morse, looked upon it as a gift from 
God to aid man in his hard struggle here below. Others were 
suspicious of it as a factor unknown to their forefathers and 
not mentioned in the Bible; it was possibly a “trap of Satan.” 
But now all qualms were forgotten, at least temporarily. 
On the same day, August 5, Cyrus Field telegraphed Presi- 
dent Buchanan that Queen Victoria would send an official 
opening message to him. The President, who was in Pennsyl- 
vania, replied next day, expressing his congratulations and 
his hope for perpetual peace between nations. An avalanche 
of congratulatory telegrams and letters began to pour in upon 
Field from all sides. The poet Longfellow wrote to a friend 
“the great news of the hour, the year, the century.’ 
There was still incredulity among persistent doubters. ‘The 
tone of an editorial in the New York Evening Post reflected 
