CYRUS W. FIELD.
Cyrus far we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius, industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings. We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune, periled it all upon an enterprise in which his own genius had recognized the path to fame and to still greater success, but which the almost united voice of the people of his country condemned as visionary, and from which they coldly held aloof until its brilliant success compelled them to acknowledge the wisdom and foresight of its projector.
Fifteen years ago very few persons had heard of Cyrus W. Field. Ten years ago he had achieved considerable notoriety as a visionary who was bent on sinking his handsome fortune in the sea. To-day, the world is full of his fame, as the man to whom, above all others, it is indebted for the successful completion of the Atlantic Telegraph; and those who were formerly loudest in ridiculing him are now foremost in his praise. "Nothing succeeds like success," and what was once in their eyes mere folly, and worthy only of ridicule, they now hail as the evidences of his courage, foresight, and profound wisdom, and wonder that they never could see them in their true light before.
Cyrus West Field was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 30th day of November, 1819, and is the son of the Rev. David Dudley Field, a distinguished clergyman of that State. He was carefully educated in the primary and grammar schools of his native county, and at the age of fifteen went to New York to seek his fortune. He had no difficulty in obtaining a clerkship in an enterprising mercantile house in that city,