OLD-TIME ORATORY 189 
and drank the toast in silence. Cobden had died a few months 
before, worn out by his persistent advocacy of more liberal 
laws for the working man. At one time Cobden had been a 
guest of Field in New York; the two had much in common 
in their ideals of public service. 
It should be added, in passing, that the Alabama claims 
were finally settled in 1872 by England’s agreement to pay 
more than fifteen million dollars to the United States—a note- 
worthy admission that the days of Lord Palmerston’s jaunty 
bullying of the American Government had passed. When 
England’s High Commissioners, including the Marquis of 
Ripon, came to the United States to negotiate the Alabama 
controversy, they were guests of Field in New York. Such 
diplomatic assistance to the improvement of Anglo-Americans 
relations was not uncommon for him. 
Field’s faculty for getting along with difficult Englishmen 
was the consequence of his direct manner of speech and his 
absence of boasting. The English were so accustomed to 
artificial and snobbish attitudes among themselves that his 
naturalness afforded relief and gave them an opening for 
demonstrating the real virtues which underlay their self- 
conscious superiority. Field’s modesty took the form, not of 
shyness and self-effacement, but of hospitality and frankness. 
While in England in 1868, he received notification from the 
Department of State in Washington that it had received for 
him from Paris a “Grand Prize and Diploma.” This prize, 
the highest honor of the Paris Exposition of that year was 
typical of the official respect paid him as the world recognized 
what a striking benefit the Atlantic cable conferred on man- 
kind. But a more discriminating and appreciated honor was 
paid him in July, when a gathering of distinguished leaders 
of British thought gave him a testimonial banquet in Lon- 
don. This was perhaps the greatest hour of his life. 
The invitations spoke of the banquet “‘as an acknowledg- 
ment of the eminent services rendered to the New and Old 
