Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 by Various

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"Garibaldi! The cause!" exclaimed Violet. "Are you not ashamed to plead
it? You know you would go then not for others, but to throw away your
own life! You are tired of living, and you seek that way to rid yourself
of life! Confess it at once!"

"Very well, then," answered Ernest, "it is so."

"Then do not sully a good cause with a traitor's help," said Violet,
"nor take its noble name. The life you offer would be worth no more than
a spent ball. You have been a coward in your own fight, and Garibaldi
does not--nor does Italy--want a coward in his ranks. Oh, Ernest,
forgive me my hard words! but it is our life that you are spending so
freely, it is our blood that you want to pour out! If you cannot live
for yourself, for me, will you not live for Harry's sake?"

"For you, for you, Heart's-Ease!" exclaimed Ernest, calling Violet by
one of her old childish names, "But Harry lives for you, and you for
him; and God knows there is no life left for me. But you are right: I am
a coward and a bungler, because I can create no life. I give myself to
you and him."

Violet stood long before the statue of Psyche, cold as the marble, with
hot fires raging within.

"He loves me, loves me as Harry does! His love is deeper,
perhaps,--higher, perhaps. He was not above me,--he lifted me above
himself, looked up to me! He dies for me!"

Presently she found Ernest.

"Ernest, you say you will do as we wish. I must go home directly, and
without you. I shall take a vessel from Leghorn. Harry and I planned my
going home that way. It is less expensive, more direct; and I confess I
do not feel so strong about going home alone as I did in coming. My head
is full of thoughts, and I could not take care of myself; but I would
rather go alone. You will stay here, and we will write to you, or Harry
will come for you. But you must take care of yourself; you must not
starve yourself."

Her Italian friends accompanied her to the vessel and bade her good-bye,
Ernest was with them. She wrote to Harry the day she sailed. The vessel
looked comfortable enough; it was well-laden, and in its hold was the
marble statue of a great man,--great in worth as well as in weight.

A few weeks after Violet left, Harry appeared in Florence. He had just
missed her letter.

"I came to bring you both home," he said. "I finished my contract
successfully, and gave myself this little vacation."

Harry was dismayed to find that Violet was gone.

"But we will return directly, and arrive in time, perhaps, to greet her
as she gets home."

Monica urged,--

"But you must not keep him long. See how much he has done in Italy! You
will see he must come back again."

"Monsieur" had been for his statue, and was to send for it the next day,
more than satisfied with it.

Harry was astonished.

"Five hundred dollars! It would take me long enough to work that out!
Ah, Ernest, your hammering is worth more than mine!"

Harry's surprise was not merely for the money earned. When he saw the
white marble figure, which brought into the poor room where it stood
grandeur and riches and life and grace, he wondered still more.

"I see now," he said. "You spent your life on this. No wonder you were
starving when your spirit was putting itself into this mould!"

Harry was in a hurry to return. Ernest's little affairs were quickly
settled. Harry was surprised to find Italian life was so like home life
in this one thing: he had been treated so kindly, just as he would have
been in his own home,--just as Mrs. Schroder, and even Aunt Martha,
would have treated a poor Italian stranger who had sought a lodging in
their house; they had welcomed Harry with the same warmth and feeling
with which they had all along cared for Ernest. This was something that
Harry knew how to translate.

"When we were boys," he said to Ernest, as they set out to return, "and
you used to talk about Europe, we little thought I should travel into it
so carelessly as I did when I came here. I crossed it much as a pair of
compasses would on the map: my only points of rest were the home I left
and the one I was reaching for."

Much in the same way they passed through it again. Harry spoke of
and observed outward things, but everything showed that it was but a
superficial observation. His thoughts were with Violet.

"'The Nereid!' are you very sure the Nereid is a sound vessel?" he often
asked.

"What should I know of the Nereid?" at last answered Ernest,
impatiently.

"I believe you don't care a rush for Violet!" cried Harry. "You can have
dreams instead! Your Psyche, your winged angels and all your visions,
they suffice you. While for me,--I tell you, Ernest, she is my flesh and
blood, my meat and drink. To think of her alone on that ocean drives me
wild; that inexorable sea haunts me night and day." He turned to look at
Ernest, and saw him pale and livid.

"God forgive me!" he said. "I know you love her, too! But it is our old
quarrel; we cannot understand each other, yet cannot live either of us
without the other. Yet I am glad to quarrel even in the old way. That is
pleasant, after all, is it not?"

They had a long, stormy voyage home; and a delay in crossing France had
made them miss the steamer they hoped to take. At each delay, Ernest
grew more silent, sadder, his face darker, his features thinner and more
sharpened. Harry was wild in his impatience, and angry, but more and
more thoughtful and careful for Ernest.

At last they reached the harbor. A friend met them who had been warned
of their arrival by telegraph from Halifax. He met them to tell them of
ill news; they would rather hear it from him.

The Nereid was lost,--lost just outside the Bay,--the vessel, the crew,
all the passengers,--in a fearful storm of a week ago, the very storm
that had delayed their own passage.

"Let us go home," said Harry. "Where is it?" asked Ernest. "Why were we
not lost in the same storm?" cried Harry. "How could we pass quietly
along the very place?"

The brothers went home into the old room. Kindly hands had been caring
for it,--had tried to place all things in their accustomed order. Even
the canary had come back from Aunt Martha's parlor.

There was a letter on the table. Harry saw that only. It was Violet's
letter, which she wrote on leaving Leghorn. He tore it from its
cover,--then gave it, opened, to Ernest.

"You must read it for me,--I cannot!" and he hurried into an inner room.

Ernest held the letter helplessly and looked round. For him there was
a double desolation in the room. The books stood untouched upon the
shelves; his mother's work-basket was laid aside. Suddenly there came
back to him the memory of that last day at home,--the joyous spring-day
in March,--which was so full of gay sounds. The clatter of the dropping
ice, the happy laugh of the water breaking into freedom, the song of the
canary, now hushed by the presence of strangers,--the thoughts of these
made gay even that moment of parting. And with them came the image of
the dear mother and of the warm-hearted Violet. Oh, the parting was
happier than the return! Now there was silence in the room, and
absence,--such unuse about all things,--such a terrible stillness! He
longed for a voice, for a sound, for words.

In his hands were words, her own, her last words. Half unconsciously he
read through the letter, as if unwillingly too, because it might not
belong to him. Yet they were her words, and for him.

"DEAR HARRY,--

"Do you know that I love him?--that I love Ernest? I ought to have known
it, just because I did not know how to confess it to myself or you. I
thought he was above us both; and when I pitied myself that he could not
love me, I pitied you, and my pity, perhaps, I mistook for love of you.
Perhaps I mistook it, for I know not but I was conscious all the time of
loving him. I learned the truth when I stood by the side of his Psyche,
and saw, that, though she hovered from the marble, though he had won
fame and success, he was unsatisfied still. It is true, he must always
remain unsatisfied, because it is his genius that thirsts, and it is my
ideal that he loves, not me. But he is dying; he asks for me. You never
could refuse him what he asked. You will give me to him? If you were not
so generous and noble-hearted, I could not ask you both for your pardon
and your pity. But you are both, and will do with me as you will.

"Your

"VIOLET."

As Ernest finished reading, as he was fully comprehending the meaning of
the words which at first had struck him idly, Harry opened the door and
came in. Ernest could not look up at first. He thought, perhaps, he was
about to darken the sorrow already heavy enough upon his brother.

But when Harry spoke and Ernest looked into his face, he saw there the
usual clear, strong expression.

"I am going to tell you, Ernest, what I should have said before,--what I
went to Florence to tell you.

"After Violet left, the whole truth began to come upon me. She loved
you; I had no right to her. She pitied me; that was why she clung to
me. You know I cannot think quickly. It was long before it all came out
clearly; but when it did come, I was anxious to act directly. I had
finished my work; I went to tell you that Violet was yours; she should
stay with you in that warm Italian sir that you liked so much; she
should bring you back to life. But I was too late. I know not if it is
my failure that has brought about this sorrow, or if God has taken it
into His own hands. I only know that she was yours living, she is yours
now. I must tell you that in the first moment of that terrible shock of
the loss, there came a wicked, selfish gleam of gladness that I had not
given her up to you. But I have wiped that out with my tears, and I can
tell you without shame that is yours, that I have given her to you."

"We can both love her now," said Ernest.

"If she were living, she might have separated us," said Harry; "but
since God has taken her, she makes us one."

And the brothers read together Violet's letter.

* * * * *

THE NEW ATLANTIC CABLE.

When the indefatigable Cyrus told our people, five years ago, that he
was going to lay a telegraph-cable in the bed of the ocean between
America and Europe, and place New York and London in instantaneous
communication, our wide-awake and enterprising fellow-citizens said very
coolly that they should like to see him do it!--a phrase intended to
convey the idea that in their opinion he had promised a great deal more
than he could perform. But Cyrus was as good as his word. The cable was
laid, and worked for the space of three weeks, conveying between the Old
and New World four hundred messages of all sorts, and some of them of
the greatest importance. Four years have elapsed since the fulfilment
of that promise, and now Mr. Field comes again before the public and
announces that a new Atlantic cable is going to be laid down, which
is not only going to work, but is to be a permanent success; and this
promise will likewise be fulfilled. You may shrug your shoulders, my
friend, and look incredulous, but I assure you the grand idea will be
realized, and speedily. I have been heretofore as incredulous as any
one; but having examined the evidence in its favor, I am fully convinced
not only of the feasibility of laying a cable, and of the certainty
of its practical operation when laid, but of its complete
indestructibility. If you will accompany me through the following
pages, my doubting friend, I will convince you of the correctness of my
conclusions.

When the fact of the successful laying of the old Atlantic cable was
known, there was no class of people in this country more surprised at
the result than the electricians, engineers, and practical telegraphers.
Meeting a friend of mine, an electrician, and who, by the way, is also
a great mathematician, and, like all of his class, inclined to be very
exact in his statements, I exclaimed, in all the warmth and exuberance
of feeling engendered by so great an event,--

"Isn't it glorious, this idea of being able to send our lightning across
the ocean, and to talk with London and Paris as readily as we do with
New York and New Orleans?"

"It is, indeed," responded my friend, with equal enthusiasm; "my hopes
are more than realized by this wonderful achievement."

"Hopes realized!" exclaimed I. "Why, I didn't consider there was one
chance in a thousand of success,--did you?"

"Why, yes," replied my exact mathematical friend; "I didn't think the
chances so much against the success of the enterprise as that. From the
deductions which I drew from a very careful examination of all the facts
I could obtain, I concluded that the chances of absolute failure were
about ninety-seven and a half per cent.!"

For many of the facts contained in this article I am indebted to the
very clear and able address delivered by Mr. Cyrus W. Field before the
American Geographical and Statistical Society, at Clinton Hall, New
York, in May last, upon the prospects of the Atlantic telegraph.

At the start, of course, every one was very ignorant of the work to be
done in establishing a telegraph across the ocean. Submarine telegraphy
was in its infancy, and aerial telegraphy had scarcely outgrown its
swaddling-clothes. We had to grope our way in the dark. It was only by
repeated experiments and repeated failures that we were able to find out
all the conditions of success.

The Atlantic telegraph, it is said by some, was a failure. Well, if it
were so, replies Mr. Field, I should say (as is said of many a man, that
he did more by his death than by his life) that even in its failure it
has been of immense benefit to the science of the world, for it has been
the great experimenting cable. No electrician ever had so long a line to
work upon before; and hence the science of submarine telegraphy never
made such rapid progress as after that great experiment. In fact, all
cables that have since been laid, where the managers availed themselves
of the knowledge and experience obtained by the Atlantic cable, have
been perfectly successful. All these triumphs over the sea are greatly
indebted to the bold attempt to cross the Atlantic made four years ago.

The first Atlantic cable, therefore, has accomplished a great work in
deep-sea telegraphy, a branch of the art but little known before. In one
sense it was a failure. In another it was a brilliant success. Despite
every disadvantage, it was laid across the ocean; it was stretched from
shore to shore; and for three weeks it continued to operate,--a time
long enough to settle forever the scientific question whether it was
possible to communicate between two continents so far apart. This was
the work of the first Atlantic telegraph; and if it lies silent at the
bottom of the ocean till the destruction of the globe, it has done
enough for the science of the world and the benefit of mankind to
entitle it to be held in honored and blessed memory.

Now, as to the prospect of success in another attempt to lay a telegraph
across the ocean. The most erroneous opinions prevail as to the
difficulties of laying submarine telegraphs in general, and securing
them against injury. It is commonly supposed that the number of failures
is much greater than of successes; whereas the fact is, that the later
attempts, where made with proper care, have been almost uniformly
successful. In proof of this I will refer to the printed "List of all
the Submarine Telegraph-Cables manufactured and laid down by Messrs.
Glass, Elliot, & Co., of London," from which it appears that within the
space of eight years, from 1854 to 1862, they have manufactured and laid
down twenty-five different cables, among which are included three of
the longest lines connecting England with the Continent,--namely, from
England to Holland, 140 miles, to Hanover, 280 miles, and to Denmark,
368 miles,--and the principal lines in the Mediterranean,--as from Italy
to Corsica and thence to Toulon, from Malta to Sicily, and from Corfu to
Otranto, and besides these, the two chief of all, that from France to
Algiers, 520 miles, laid in 1860, and the other, laid only last year,
from Malta to Alexandria, 1,535 miles! All together the lines laid by
these manufacturers comprise a total of 3,739 miles; and though some
have been lying at the bottom of the sea and working for eight years,
each one of them is at this hour in as perfect condition as on the day
it was laid down, with the exception of the two short lines laid in
shallow water along the shore between Liverpool and Holyhead, 25 miles,
and from Prince Edward's Island to New Brunswick, 11 miles; the latter
of which was broken by a ship's anchor, and the former by the anchor
of the Royal Charter during the gale in which she was wrecked, both of
which can be easily repaired.

Where failures have occurred in submarine telegraphs, the causes are now
well understood and easily to be avoided. Thus with the first Atlantic
cable, its defects have all been carefully investigated by scientific
men, and may be easily guarded against. When this cable was in process
of manufacture in the factory of Messrs. Glass, Elliot, & Co., in
Greenwich, near London, it was coiled in four large vats, and there
left exposed, day after day, to the heat of a summer sun, which was
intensified by the tarred coating of the cable to one hundred and twenty
degrees. This went on, day after day, with the knowledge of the engineer
and electrician of the company, although the directors had given
explicit orders that sheds should be erected over the vats to prevent
the possibility of such an occurrence. As might have been foreseen, the
gutta-percha was melted, so that the conductor which it was desired to
insulate was so twisted by the coils that it was left quite bare in
numberless places, thus weakening, and eventually, when the cable
was submerged, destroying the insulation. The injury was partially
discovered before the cable was taken out of the factory at Greenwich,
and a length of about thirty miles was cut out and condemned. This,
however, did not wholly remedy the difficulty, for the defective
insulation became frequently and painfully apparent while the cable was
being submerged. Still further evidence of its imperfect condition was
afforded when it came to be cut up for charms and trinkets.

The first cable was, to a great extent, an experiment,--a leap in
the dark. Its material and construction were as good as the state of
knowledge at that time provided, and in many respects not unsuitable;
but the company could not avail itself, at that time, of the instruments
or apparatus for testing its conducting power and insulation, in the
manner since pointed out by experience. The effects of temperature,
as we have seen, were not provided for. The vast differences in the
conducting power of copper were discovered only by means of that cable,
when made. The mathematical law whereby the proportions of insulation to
conduction are determined had not been fully investigated; and it was
even argued by some of the pretended electricians in the employ of the
company, that, the smaller the conductor, the more rapidly the current
could pass through it. No mode of protecting the external sheath from
oxidation had then been discovered; and the kind of machinery necessary
for submerging cables in deep water could only be theoretically assumed.

Looking back to that period, and granting that there was too much haste
in the preparations, and that other mistakes were committed which could
now be foreseen and avoided, it is not too much to say, that, if that
cable could be laid and worked, as was done, after one failure in 1857,
and the consequent uncoiling and storage of it in an exposed situation,
and after three attempts in 1858, under the most fearful circumstances
as to weather, it would be an easy task to lay a cable constructed and
submerged by the light of present experience.

[Illustration: The Cable laid in 1858.]

[Illustration: The proposed New Cable.]

The above cuts, representing sections of the cable laid in 1858 and the
proposed new cable, will serve to show the difference between the two,
and the immense superiority of the latter over the former. In the old
Atlantic cable the copper conducting-wire weighed but ninety-three
pounds to the mile, while in the new cable it weighs five hundred and
ten pounds to the mile, _or more than five times as much_. Now the size,
or diameter, of a telegraphic conductor is just as important an item, in
determining the strength of current which can be maintained upon it with
a given amount of battery-force, as the length of the conductor. To
produce the effects by which the messages are expressed at the end of
a telegraphic wire or cable, it is necessary that the electric current
should have a certain intensity or strength. Now the intensity of the
current transmitted by a given voltaic battery along a given line of
wire will decrease, other things being the same, in the same proportion
as the length of the wire increases. Thus, if the wire be continued for
ten miles, the current will have twice the intensity which it would
have, if the wire had been extended to a distance of twenty miles. It is
evident, therefore, that the wire may be continued to such a length that
the current will no longer have sufficient intensity to produce at the
station to which the despatch is transmitted those effects by which the
language of the despatch is signified. _But the intensity of the current
transmitted by a given voltaic battery upon a wire of given length will
be increased in the same proportion as the area of the section of the
wire is augmented_. Thus, if the diameter of the wire be doubled, the
area of its section being increased in a fourfold proportion, the
intensity of the current transmitted along the wire will be increased in
the same ratio. The intensity of the current may also be augmented by
increasing the number of pairs of the generating plates or cylinders
composing the galvanic battery.

All electrical terms are arbitrary, and necessarily unintelligible
to the general reader. I shall, therefore, use them as sparingly as
possible, and endeavor to make myself clearly understood by explaining
those which I do use.

All telegraphic conductors offer a certain resistance to the passage of
an electric current, and the amount of this resistance is proportional
to the length of the conductor, and inversely to its size. In order to
overcome this resistance, it is necessary to increase the number of
the cells in the battery, and thus obtain a fluid of greater force or
intensity.

On aerial telegraph-lines this increase in the intensity of the battery
occasions no particular inconvenience, other than by tending to the more
rapid destruction of the small copper coils, or helices, employed;
but upon submarine lines it has the effect of increasing the static
electricity, or electricity of tension, which accumulates along the
surface of the gutta-percha covering of the conducting-wire, in the same
manner as static electricity accumulates on the surface of glass, or of
a stick of sealing-wax, by rubbing it with a piece of cloth. The use of
submarine or of subterranean conductors occasions, from the above cause,
a small retardation in the velocity of the transmitted electricity. This
retardation is not due to the length of the path which the electric
current has to traverse, since it does not take place with a conductor,
equally long, insulated in the air; but it arises from a static
reaction, caused by the passage of an intense current through a
conductor well insulated, but surrounded outside its insulating coating
by a conducting body, such as sea-water or moist ground, or even by the
metallic envelope of iron wires placed in communication with the ground.
When this conductor is presented to one of the poles of a battery, the
other pole of which communicates with the ground, it becomes charged
with static electricity, like the coating of a Leyden-jar,--electricity
which is capable of giving rise to a discharge-current, even after the
voltaic current has ceased to be transmitted. Volta showed in one of his
beautiful experiments, that, in putting one of the ends of his pile
in communication with the earth, and the other with a non-insulated
Leyden-jar, the jar was charged in an instant of time to a degree
proportional to the force of the pile. At the same time an instantaneous
current was observed in the conductor between the pile and the jar,
which had all the properties of an ordinary current. Now it is evident
that the subaqueous wire with its insulating covering may be assimilated
exactly to an immense Leyden-jar. The glass of the jar represents the
gutta-percha; the internal coating is the surface of the copper wire;
the external coating is the surrounding metallic envelope and water. To
form an idea of the capacity of this new kind of battery, we have only
to remember that the surface of the wire is equal to fourteen square
yards per mile. Bringing such a wire into communication by one of its
ends with a battery, of which the opposite pole is in contact with the
earth, whilst the other extremity of the wire is insulated, must cause
the wire to take a charge of the same character and tension as that of
the pole of the battery touched by it.

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