l, but because it dispelled our last doubt. We all began to form
a more definite idea of something great to come, that was yet lying
stored away in the brain,--laid there from the beginning. Like the
Magian on the heights of Moab, as he saw the tents of Israel and the
tabernacle of God in the distance, we grew big with an involuntary
vision, and were surprised into prophecies.

It was wonderful to see the Queen of England, on one side of that chasm
of three thousand miles, wave a greeting to the President, and the
President wave back a greeting to the Queen. But it was glorious to see
that chord quiver with the music and the truth of the angelic song:--

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace,
Good-will toward men!"

Soon, however, came a check to the excitement. For above a score of days
was that mysterious highway kept open from Valentia to Trinity Bay. But
then the spell was lost, the waves flowed back, old ocean rolled on as
before, and the crossing messages perished, like the hosts of Pharaoh in
the sea.

That the miracle is ended is no indication that it cannot be repeated.
For the very reason that the now dead, inarticulate wire, like an
infant, lisped and stammered once, it is certain that another will
soon be born, which will live to trumpet forth like the angel of
civilization, its minister of flaming fire! No one should abate a jot
from the high hope excited then. No imagination should suffer a cloud on
the picture it then painted. Governments and capitalists have not
been idle, and will not be discouraged. Already Europe and Africa are
connected by an electric tunnel under the sea, five hundred miles in
length; already Malta and Alexandria speak to each other through a tube
lying under thirteen hundred miles of Mediterranean waters; already
Britain bound to Holland and Hanover and Denmark by a triple cord of
sympathy which all the tempests of the German Ocean cannot sever. And if
we come nearer home, we shall find a project matured which will carry a
fiery cordon around the entire coast of our country, linking fortress to
fortress, and providing that last, desperate resource of unity, an outer
girdle and jointed chain of force, to bind together and save a nation
whose inner bonds of peace and love are broken.

Such energy and such success are enough to revive the expectation and to
guaranty the coming of the day when we shall behold the electric light
playing round the world unquen