near, could communicate with each other directly, and that such an organization must be financially successful.  He saw all this vividly, and realized it with the most intense earnestness of conviction.  With Mr. Sibley, to be convinced was to act; and so he set about the task of carrying this vast scheme into execution.  The result is well known.  By his immense energy, the magnetic power with which he infused his own convictions into other minds, the direct, practical way in which he set about the work, and his indomitable perseverance, Mr. Sibley attained at last a phenomenal success.

But he was not then telling me anything about this.  He was telling me of the construction of the telegraph line to the Pacific Coast.  Here again Mr. Sibley had seen that which was hidden from others.  This case differed from the former one in two important respects.  Then Mr. Sibley had been dependent on the aid and co-operation of many persons; and this he had been able to secure.  Now, he could not obtain help from a human being; but he had become able to act independently of any assistance.

He had made a careful study of the subject, in his thoroughly practical way, and had become convinced that such a line was feasible, and would be remunerative.  At his instance a convention of telegraph men met in the city of New York, to consider the project.  The feeling in this convention was extremely unfavorable to it.  A committee reported against it unanimously, on three grounds—­the country was destitute of timber, the line would be destroyed by the Indians, and if constructed and maintained, it would not pay expenses.  Mr. Sibley found himself alone.  An earnest appeal which he made from the report of the committee was received with derisive laughter.  The idea of running a telegraph line through what was then a wilderness, roamed over for between one and two thousand miles of its breadth by bands of savages, who of course would destroy the line as soon as it was put up, and where repairs would be difficult and useless, even if the other objections to it were out of the way, struck the members of the convention as so exquisitely ludicrous that it seemed as if they would never be done laughing about it.  If Mr. Sibley had advocated a line to the moon, they would hardly have seen in it greater evidence of lunacy.  When he could be heard, he rose again and said:  “Gentlemen, you may laugh, but if I was not so old, I would build the line myself.”  Upon this, of course, they laughed louder than ever.  As they laughed, he grew mad, and shouted:  “Gentlemen, I will bar the years, and do it.”  And he did it.  Without help from any one, for every man who claimed a right to express an opinion upon it scouted the project as chimerical, and no capitalist would put a dollar in it, Hiram Sibley built the line of telegraph to San Francisco, risking in it all he had in the world.  He set about the work with his customary energy, all obstacles vanished, and the line