It is curious how things are linked together by association in this life of ours. For instance, I never send a cable message or hear of cables without recalling the closing incident of this never to be forgotten and never to be equaled trip abroad at the close of the great Civil War.

While at Liverpool on our way home in 1866, your mother and I went aboard the “Great Eastern,” which had just completed laying the Atlantic cable. Attempts had failed on one or two occasions before, when the cable was coiled in two ships and spliced in midocean, but for some cause of other unsuccessfully. Had the big vessel not been on hand, the cable might not have been laid for years, if at all.