For the opening ceremony there was great rivalry amongst the leading papers of New York, and the “Herald” made very expensive arrangements to cable a full account; and, beside its European manager, John Russell Young, and its telegraphic manager, Mr. Sauer, it had Edmund Yates and a well-known European lady novelist to make up the report.  The “Tribune” sent to my assistance an old friend, Bayard Taylor, and one of the staff from New York, E.V.  Smalley.  The “Herald” was prepared for practically unlimited expenditure on the occasion; the “Tribune” simply ordered me to telegraph 6000 words to Smalley at London, leaving the question of cabling open.  Young thought me a rival to be held in poor account, and was careless.  All the “Herald” staff took their places in the Exhibition building for the ceremony of opening by the Emperor, which was no doubt spectacular; but, as the doors were to be closed until the ceremony was over, and the Emperor rose to make the tour of the Exhibition, no one could get at the telegraph till all was complete.  I stayed outside and sacrificed the spectacle.  I had found who was to be the telegraph inspector for the day, and I went to him with an offer to hire a wire for the day.  This was impossible, he said, as there was to be but one wire for all the foreign press.  I put my case to him as that of a beginner in the service, to whom a success was of great importance for the future, and asked to be allowed to declare 6000 words to follow continuously; but this too, he said, was against the regulations.  But I secured his sympathy, and he finally promised me that if I got first on the wire, and my message came without interruption, one section being laid before the operator before the other was finished, they should go on without interruption, as one message; but, if one minute lapsed and another message came in the interval, I must take my turn with the others.

As Taylor was an old hand, and wrote a most legible script, and style currente calamo, I told him to write what he could as the ceremony went on, and, the moment the doors were opened, to consign what he had written to a messenger whom I had hired for the day,—­an American clerk of one of the exhibitors under some little obligation to me, a sharp Yankee, for whose use I had hired a cab, with the fastest horse I could find, to run back and forth between the Exhibition and the telegraph.  Taylor was then to finish his account of the opening ceremonies and bring it or send it by the messenger to me at the telegraph office, the messenger waiting or returning for the first installment of Smalley’s account of the imperial inspection, which he was to follow closely.  After this he was to continue to write the incidents of the opening; and when the whole approximated to the 6000 words needed, he was to come himself to the telegraph.  I, meanwhile, went into the streets and devoted myself to picking up incidents of the procession, the deportment of the population, and the weather; and when I supposed that the opening of the doors was about to take place I went to the telegraph office and deposited 1200 words.  Long before these could be sent, Taylor’s first installment came, and then Taylor himself with the second.  Young, seeing my staff always present, and thinking me asleep, took his time.