184 A SAGA OF THE SEAS 
deep; that the latest intelligence of the crops, whose dancing 
tassels will, in a few months, be coquetting with the west wind 
on those boundless prairies, should go flashing along the 
slimy decks of old sunken galleons, which have been rotting 
for ages; that messages of friendship and love, from warm, 
living bosoms, should burn over the cold, green bones of men 
and women, whose hearts, once as warm as ours, burst as the 
eternal gulfs closed and roared over them centuries ago.” 
This speech by Everett is a reminder that people today 
have ceased to be thrilled, not only by the thought of a won- 
der-working cable under the ocean, but also by the ardent 
oratory that attracted the great-grandfathers and great-grand- 
mothers of the present generation. It was, of course, a much 
different world from that of today. Every generation appears 
strange and ludicrous to the generations that immediately 
succeed it, just as in fifty years the radio sales-talks and the 
football games of today will probably arouse roars of laughter. 
It might be suggested, however, that Cyrus Field, with his 
progressive ideas and public spirit, would be more at home 
today—if deprived of his beard—than most of his contempo- 
raries. He was, in many respects, ahead of his time and was 
happily free of the pompous and stodgy manner that char- 
acterized so many of the eminent worthies of the Victorian 
period. 
A matter of national policy that interested Field at that 
time because of his association with England, was the clearing 
up of the chaotic post-war finances. The Secretary of State, 
his old friend Seward, wrote him in February of 1868 about 
the heavy demands being made upon the Government. Field 
was arranging to go to England in a few days. He wrote to the 
Secretary of the Treasury at Washington, saying: “I have un- 
doubted confidence in the good faith of our government that 
it will pay the principal and interest of every dollar of its 
bonded debt in gold, and shall do all in my power to make 
my friends in Europe think as I do.” 
