THE WORLD MOVES ON 204 
ships! Don’t let them sail yet. I must make further experi- 
ments.’ ”’ 
His mind wandered to the great crises of his active and ad- 
venturous life, when he sailed the North Atlantic, paying out 
cable through fogs and storms. At times he talked of old 
friends and associates, and imagined that the figures around 
his bed were those of Morse, Gladstone, and others prominent 
in his early career. Toward the end he was quieter and, al- 
though he was not able to speak, his eyes followed with af- 
fection those who had gathered there. He was buried at Stock- 
bridge near his wife and parents. 
The New York newspapers devoted much space to his obit- 
uary. Although the advantages of ocean cables for news serv- 
ice had long been taken for granted, and a new generation of 
editors had come on the scene, it was still realized that Field 
had been the pioneer of such advancement. The New York 
Herald gave over a page to his death and biography. 
As an indication of the period in which Field died, the news- 
papers announcing his death printed a vast variety of news. 
They were totally unlike the newspapers of his youth. The 
city of St. John’s, Newfoundland, for example, was reported 
half destroyed by a disastrous fire. In England, the aged but 
robust Gladstone—ten years Field’s senior—had just been re- 
elected to Parliament; he was to be Prime Minister for sever- 
al years more. In America, the bitterly-fought Homestead 
strike of steel-workers raged in Pennsylvania. At Washington, 
a bill for the free coinage of silver had been defeated in Con- 
gress. There was an item in the paper about litigation over 
Edison’s incandescent-light filament. In New York, electric 
storage-batteries were replacing horses on the Second Avenue 
street-cars, and improvements were being made on Broad- 
way’s cable-railway. In the city’s slums, babies were dying 
from a heat wave. 
After Field’s death, many eloquent testimonials were paid 
to his memory. The troubles of his later years were still fresh 
