The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

"In its leading features it presented a striking difference to the ceremony of last year. Earnest gravity and a deep-seated determination to repress all show of the enthusiasm of which everybody was full, was very manifest. The excitement was below, instead of above, the surface. Speech-making, hurrahing, public congratulations, and vaunts of confidence were, as it seemed, avoided as if on purpose. There was something far more touching in the quiet and reverent solemnity of the spectators yesterday than in the slightly boisterous joviality of the peasantry last year. Nothing could prevent the scene being intensely dramatic, but the prevailing tone of the drama was serious instead of comic and triumphant. The old crones in tattered garments who cowered together, dudheen in mouth, their gaudy colored shawls tightly drawn over head and under the chin--the barefooted boys and girls, who by long practice walked over sharp and jagged rocks, which cut up boots and shoes, with perfect impunity--the men at work uncovering the trench, and winding in single file up and down the hazardous path cut by the cablemen in the otherwise inaccessible rock--the patches of bright color furnished by the red petticoats and cloaks--the ragged garments, only kept from falling to pieces by bits of string and tape--the good old parish priest, who exercises mild and gentle spiritual sway over the loving subjects of whom the ever-popular Knight of Kerry is the temporal head, looking on benignly from his car--the bright eyes, supple figures, and innocent faces of the peasant lasses, and the earnestly hopeful expression of all--made up a picture impossible to describe with justice. Add to this, the startling abruptness with which the tremendous cliffs stand flush out of the water, the alternations of bright wild flowers and patches of verdure with the most desolate barrenness, the mountain sheep indifferently cropping the short, sweet grass, and the undercurrent of consciousness of the mighty interests at stake, and few scenes will seem more important and interesting than that of yesterday."