LUCK TURNS AGAIN 265 
Field was still in England when Grant died. He helped to 
arrange a memorial service for the ex-president in Westmin- 
ster Abbey, at which Dean F. W. Farrar spoke. A large crowd 
attended, including representatives of the Queen and the Gov- 
ernment. 
His friends were growing old. Upon his return home, he 
joined with his brothers, David, Stephen, and Henry in send- 
ing a telegram to George Bancroft, the historian, upon the 
occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday. Bancroft had been a 
fellow passenger with Cyrus Field and Mrs. Field in returning 
from Europe in 1849. He was destined to live until over 
ninety. On this occasion, he telegraphed back: “When I am 
gone, keep the departed traveler kindly in memory.” 
In the summer of 1886, Field was again in London, renew- 
ing old friendships and dining out. He was present, for ex- 
ample, at a special dinner in the Liberal Club. One of the 
speakers, who had been on the Great Eastern during the cable- 
laying, recalled that, even when Field’s fortune hung in the 
balance of a coil of cable, his poise and courage never failed 
him. There was more to this remark than appeared at the 
time. Within a year, Field’s fortune was to hang in the bal- 
ance, not of a metal cable slipping to ocean depths, but of a 
flimsy tape from a ticker recording the depths of a fallen stock. 
In late August, as he had done two years before, he took a 
western trip, partly in Canada. He helped to set the fashion 
for Americans to use the newly-built railroads to visit the 
coast and the Canadian Rockies. These long-distance trains 
were becoming more and more comfortable, as George Pull- 
man learned to design better sleeping-cars and dining-cars. 
During that autumn, his long fight for a uniform fare of 
five cents at all hours was won for the passengers on the New 
York elevated lines. This lower rate had the effect of chang- 
ing the types of passengers carried. When ten cents was 
charged—a relatively large proportion of a worker’s wages— 
the affluent classes patronized the lines. At that time, the cars 
