aloof until its brilliant success compelled
them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its projector.

Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W. Field. Ten
years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as a visionary who was
bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the sea. To-day, the world is
full of his fame, as the man to whom, above all others, it is indebted
for the successful completion of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who
were formerly loudest in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise.
"Nothing succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere
folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the evidences of
his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and wonder that they never
could see them in their true light before.

Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day
of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a
distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the
primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of
fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in
obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city,
and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His
employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few
years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was
uniform and marked--so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only
thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business
with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.

Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his
retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in
foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next
six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon
his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his
intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business,
and to engage in no new schemes.

He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D.
Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he
had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of
Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting
some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in
Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring