168 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
“When the first cable was laid in 1858 electricians thought 
that to send a current two thousand miles it must be almost 
like a stroke of lightning. But God was not in the earthquake, 
but in the still, small voice. The other day Mr. Latimer Clark 
telegraphed from Ireland across the ocean and back again 
with a battery formed in a lady’s thimble! And now Mr. Col- 
lett writes me from Heart’s Content: ‘I have just sent my 
compliments to Dr. Gould, of Cambridge, who is at Valentia, 
with a battery composed of a gun cap, with a strip of zinc, 
excited by a drop of water, the simple bulk of a tear!’” 
Among the guests at this banquet was General George G. 
Meade, who was loudly acclaimed as “the hero of Gettysburg, ” 
to which he answered that there was but one hero on this oc- 
casion and that he, the General, had traveled a hundred miles 
to pay him honor, after watching anxiously Field’s hard strug- 
gles and disasters. ‘““The heartiness of this soldierly reply,” 
wrote Henry Field, ‘‘was echoed by the bluff old warrior, 
Admiral Farragut, who had been so often through the smoke 
and flame of battle, that he knew how to appreciate not only 
common courage, but the desperate tenacity that holds on in 
spite of disaster.” Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase sent his con- 
gratulations from Washington “‘to Mr. Field upon the success 
of his grand undertaking—the most wonderful achievement 
of civilization.’’ Secretary of State Seward, General Grant, 
President Johnson, and many other dignitaries sent eulogistic 
messages. 
The Common Council of New York passed resolutions at 
this time couched in the pompous language of the period con- 
eratulating Field on “the success attending his unexampled 
perseverance in the face of almost insuperable difficulties, and 
his fortitude and faith in the successful termination of the 
herculean labor to which he has devoted his rare business 
capacity, his indomitable will, and his undaunted courage for 
a series of years—that of uniting the two hemispheres by teleg- 
raphy.” This formidable array of words was merely part of 
