een heretofore as incredulous as any
one; but having examined the evidence in its favor, I am fully convinced
not only of the feasibility of laying a cable, and of the certainty
of its practical operation when laid, but of its complete
indestructibility. If you will accompany me through the following
pages, my doubting friend, I will convince you of the correctness of my
conclusions.

When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was
known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at
the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers.
Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also
a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very
exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance
of feeling engendered by so great an event,--

"Isn't it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across
the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with
New York and New Orleans?"

"It is, indeed," responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; "my hopes
are more than realized by this wonderful achievement."

"Hopes realized!" exclaimed I. "Why, I didn't consider there was one
chance in a thousand of success,--did you?"

"Why, yes," replied my exact mathematical friend; "I didn't think the
chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that. From the
deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts
I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were
about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!"

For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the
very clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before the
American Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, New
York, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.

At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be
done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy
was in its infancy, and aerial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its
swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by
repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out
all the conditions of success.

The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure. Well, if it
were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that
he did more by his death than by his life) that e