INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 199 
The suggestions in this letter, which were amply justified 
by facts, were acted upon a year or more later, when the 
Anglo-American Company absorbed the Atlantic Telegraph 
Company. As the years went on, a more unified control of 
the organization was effected, and the loose ends were pulled 
in. The Anglo-American Company continued to absorb other 
companies, including its competitors. In 1873 it bought out 
the New York, Newfoundland & London Company; this was 
just before the financial depression of that autumn. 
Varley’s letter indicates the high esteem in which Field 
was held both in England and America. He was now a rich 
and powerful man. During that winter, of 1868-69, his wife 
and two daughters journeyed to the south of France. Field 
sailed in January to join them at Pau. Just before he left he 
received from Secretary of State Seward the gold medal (sec- 
ond impression) that had been voted to him by Congress two 
years before. 
In the spring he was once more among his friends in Eng- 
land. While there he received a cablegram announcing the 
completion of the Pacific railroad connecting the newly-ac- 
quired and gold-enriched California with the Eastern states. 
He forwarded this message to his friend General Dix in Paris. 
By June he was back in New York and busy with important 
tasks. 
Since he could afford a country home as well as his New 
York house, he acquired a tract of land on a hill overlooking 
the Hudson between Dobb’s Ferry and Irvington, about 
twenty miles from New York. This property was later ex- 
panded to an estate of several hundred acres. The house 
was a commodious structure in the Victorian style. It was 
named Ardsley, from the old Yorkshire residence of the fam- 
ily before Zechariah Field came to Massachusetts in the time 
of the Pilgrims. There is now a station on the New York Cen- 
tral railroad called Ardsley-on-Hudson, at the foot of the hill 
where the old mansion stood. This district is part of Sleepy 
