64 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
the age. After the first and second attempts to lay the Atlantic 
cable had failed, wiseacres shook their heads in sympathetic 
disapprobation of Mr. Field and said, ‘What a fool he was!’ 
It was evident to them all along that the thing could never 
succeed, and they could not understand why a sensible, clear- 
headed man like Field would risk his whole fortune in such a 
railroad-to-the-moon undertaking. If he had ventured a third 
of it or a half, there might be some excuse for him, but to 
have placed it all on the hazard of a die where the chances 
were a hundred to one against him—worse even than the 
Wall Street lottery conducted under the name of the Stock 
Exchange—was an evidence of folly and absurdity which they 
could not overlook and for which he deserved to suffer. 
“Now all that is changed. Midnight has given place to noon. 
The sun shines brightly in the heavens and the shadows of 
the night have passed away and are forgotten. Failures have 
been only the stepping-stones to success the most brilliant. 
The cable is laid; and now the most honored name in the 
world is that of Cyrus W. Field, although but yesterday there 
were ‘None so poor to do him reverence.’ 
“The wiseacres who shook their heads the other day and 
pitied while they condemned him are now among the fore- 
most in his praise, and help to make his name a household 
word. Bells are rung and guns are fired and buildings are 
illuminated in his honor throughout the length and breadth 
of the land; and prominent among all devices and first on 
every tongue and uppermost in every heart is his name. Had 
he not, like the great Bruce, persevered in the face of repeated 
failures until his efforts were at length crowned with success, 
he would have been held up to the growing generation as an 
illustration of the danger of allowing our minds to be ab- 
sorbed by an impracticable idea, and his history would have 
been served up in play and romance, and used “To point a 
moral or adorn a tale.’ As it is, the nation is proud of him, 
the world knows him, and all mankind is his debtor.” 
