old lady in "Punch" who had to pass a surveyor in the street,
behind a theodolite. "Please, sir, don't shoot till I get past,"
she begged.

Before leaving England, I had made very elaborate arrangements,
both with the Astronomer Royal and with the telegraph companies,
to determine the longitude of Gibraltar by telegraphic signals.
The most difficult part of the operation was the transfer of the
signals from the end of the land line into the cable, which had to
be done by hand, because the cable companies were not willing to
trust to an automatic action of any sort between the land line and
the cable. It was therefore necessary to show the operator at the
point of junction how signals were to be transmitted. This required
a journey to Port Curno, at the very end of the Land's End, several
miles beyond the terminus of the railway. It was the most old-time
place I ever saw; one might have imagined himself thrown back into the
days of the Lancasters. The thatched inn had a hard stone floor, with
a layer of loose sand scattered over it as a carpet in the bedroom.
My linguistic qualities were put to a severe test in talking with
the landlady. But the cable operators were pleasing and intelligent
young gentlemen, and I had no difficulty in making them understand
how the work was to be done.

The manager of the cable was Sir James Anderson, who had formerly
commanded a Cunard steamship from Boston, and was well known to
the Harvard professors, with whom he was a favorite. I had met
him, or at least seen him, at a meeting of the American Academy ten
years before, where he was introduced by one of his Harvard friends.
After commanding the ship that laid the first Atlantic cable, he was
made manager of the cable line from England to Gibraltar. He gave me
a letter to the head operator at Gibraltar, the celebrated de Sauty.

I say "the celebrated," but may it not be that this appellation can
only suggest the vanity of all human greatness? It just occurs to me
that many of the present generation may not even have heard of the--

Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,
Holding talk with nations,

immortalized by Holmes in one of his humorously scientific poems.
During the two short weeks that the first Atlantic cable transmitted
its signals, his fame spread over the land, for the moment obscuring
by its brilliancy that of Thomson, Field, and all others who had
taken part in designing and laying the cabl