When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers.  Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance of feeling engendered by so great an event,—­

“Isn’t it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with New York and New Orleans?”

“It is, indeed,” responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; “my hopes are more than realized by this wonderful achievement.”

“Hopes realized!” exclaimed I.  “Why, I didn’t consider there was one chance in a thousand of success,—­did you?”

“Why, yes,” replied my exact mathematical friend; “I didn’t think the chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that.  From the deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!”

For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the very clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before the American Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, New York, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.

At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean.  Submarine telegraphy was in its infancy, and aerial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its swaddling-clothes.  We had to grope our way in the dark.  It was only by repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out all the conditions of success.

The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure.  Well, if it were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that he did more by his death than by his life) that even in its failure it has been of immense benefit to the science of the world, for it has been the great experimenting cable.  No electrician ever had so long a line to work upon before; and hence the science of submarine telegraphy never made such rapid progress as after that great experiment.  In fact, all cables that have since been laid, where the managers availed themselves of the knowledge and experience obtained by the Atlantic cable, have been perfectly successful.  All these triumphs over the sea are greatly indebted to the bold attempt to cross the Atlantic made four years ago.