and, from the first, gave evidence of unusual business capacity. His employers, pleased with his promise, advanced him rapidly, and in a few years he became a partner in the house. His success as a merchant was uniform and marked—so marked, indeed, that in 1853, when only thirty-four years old, he was able to partially retire from business with a large fortune as the substantial reward of his mercantile career.
Mr. Field had devoted himself so closely to his business that, at his retirement, he resolved to seek recreation and change of scene in foreign travel, and accordingly he left New York, and passed the next six months in journeying through the mountains of South America. Upon his return home, at the close of the year 1853, he declared his intention to withdraw entirely from active participation in business, and to engage in no new schemes.
He had scarcely returned home, however, when his brother, Mr. Matthew D. Field, a successful and well-known civil engineer, informed him that he had just become acquainted with a Mr. Frederick N. Gisborne, of Newfoundland, who had come to New York for the purpose of interesting some American capitalists in a company which had been organized in Newfoundland for the purpose of procuring news in America and Europe, and transmitting it between the two continents with greater dispatch than was possible in the then existing mode of communication between the two countries. The scheme of Mr. Gisborne had commended itself to Mr. Matthew Field, and he urged his brother to meet that gentleman and hear his statements. Mr. Cyrus Field at once declined to undertake any share in the enterprise, and said that it would be useless for him to meet Mr. Gisborne; but his brother was so urgent that he at last consented to grant Mr. Gisborne an interview, and at least hear what he had to say. At the appointed time, Mr. Field received Mr. Gisborne at his house, and was there made acquainted with the proposed plan of operations of the "Electric Telegraph Company of Newfoundland." This company had gone into bankruptcy a short time