CYRUS THE GREAT 63 
conservative opinion. Although the news headlines pro- 
claimed: ‘Success of the Atlantic Telegraph Cable,” the edi- 
torial said with the professional austerity characteristic of its 
noted editor, William Cullen Bryant, a friend of Field: “Such 
is the startling intelligence which reaches us just as we are 
going to press. We find it difficult to believe the report, for 
recent events have prepared us for a very different result, and 
yet the dispatch comes to us through our regular agent, who 
would not deceive us. He may have been imposed upon, but 
that is quite unlikely. If the few coming hours shall confirm 
the inspiring tidings and the cable is landed and in working 
condition, all other events that may happen through the world 
on this day will be trifles. 
“To-morrow the hearts of the civilized world will beat to 
a single pulse, and from that time forth forevermore the con- 
tinental divisions of the earth will in a measure lose those 
conditions of time and distance which now mark their rela- 
tions one to the other. But such an event, like a dispensation 
of Providence, should be first contemplated in silence.” 
The rise in the fortunes of the telegraph company is 
graphically indicated by the quotations of the stock of the 
Atlantic Telegraph Company in London. Before the success- 
ful completion of the cable-laying, the thousand-pounds shares 
sold at three hundred fifty pounds; after the good news ar- 
rived, the price jumped to nine hundred pounds. A few 
weeks later, unfortunately, they were to sink again. 
An interesting article in the New York Herald of August 9 
summarizes the alteration in popular feeling about Cyrus 
Field and furnishes a philosophical sermon on_ historical 
fame. The article said: 
“Many terse and witty things have been said and written 
in all ages to show the difference with which the same enter- 
prise is viewed when it results in success and when it results 
in failure. We have never had any better illustration of this 
than we now have in connection with the great enterprise of 
