The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

Other cities were equally gracious, equally complimentary, but equally prudent. In New York he succeeded better, but only by indefatigable exertions. He addressed the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Brokers, and the Corn Exchange, and then he went almost literally from door to door, calling on merchants and bankers to enlist their aid. The result was, subscriptions amounting to about seventy thousand pounds, the whole of which was due to persevering personal solicitation. Even of those who subscribed, a large part did so more from sympathy and admiration of his indomitable spirit than from confidence in the success of the enterprise. In England, however, the subject was better understood. For obvious reasons, the science of submarine telegraphy had made greater advances in that country than in ours. As England is an island, she is obliged to hold all her telegraphic communication with the continent by cables under the sea. She has colonial possessions in all parts of the world. A power that rules so large a part of the earth cannot be shut up in her island home. No one has depicted the extent of her dominion in nobler phrase than our own Webster when he speaks of the imperial sway which "has dotted the face of the whole globe with its possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, encircles the whole earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England." Was it strange that this mother of nations should reach out her long arms to embrace her distant children?