Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1858-08-10
The Atlantic CabIe-Mr, Everet.,s Ora
tom

The Atlantic CabIe-Mr, EYeret.'s Ora
taOns
Hon. Edward Everett, in his Grafton at st.
Louis, in April, 1867, and repeated at the
Triennial Festival of the Alumni of Harvard
University, last year, had the following elo-
quent allusion to the transatlantic telegraph ::
"Does it seem much that the skill of men
has in these latter days contrived the means
of communicating intelligence almost with
the rapldlty Of thought across the expanse OF
continents and beneath the depth OF oceans
by the electric wire That a message dis
patched from Boston at midday, will so far
out-travel the sun as to reach st Louis an
hour before he arrives at that meridian 1t
is much, and we contemplate with Just amaze
ment the wonderful apparatus, which, when
laid down, as sooner or later it perhaps will
be, SO as to connect the three continents, may
by possibility, send the beginning of such
sentence as | am now pronouncing around
the terraqueous globe, and return it to the
lips of the speaker, before he has completed
its utterance. But this amazing apparatus,
is but another form OF language it trans
mits intelligence only as it transmits words.
1t is like speech, like the pen, like the press,
another piece of machinery by which Ian
guage is conveyed from place to place. The
really wonderful thing is language itself, by
which thought is made sensible and commu-
nicated from mind to mind not only in the
great living congregation of the civilized
world for the time being, but through the
vast general assembly of the ages by which
we are able al this moment not only to listen
to all the great utterances which express the
thoughts and emotions of the present day
throughout the world, but to soar with Mil
ton to the green fields of Paradise in the
morning of creation; to descend with Dante
to the depths of penal woe to listen to the
thunders of FULLY and Demosthenes and,
by the golden chain of etymology, trace the
affinity and descent of nations back, through
the labyrinth of the past, almost to the cradle
of the race.
1 hold in my hand a portion of the identi-
cal electrical cable, given to me by my friend i,
Mr.. Peabody, which is now (April %, 1851, )
IN progress of manufacture, to connect Amer
lea with Europe. 1 read upon it the follow
ing words; g. part of the submarine cleo
trio telegraph cable, manufactured by Messrs
Glass u Co of London, for the Atlantic Tel
egraph Company, to connect St. Johns New
toundland, with Valencia, Ireland, distance
OF sixteen hundred and forty nautical, or
nineteen hundred statute miles, Does it
seem all but incredible that intelligence
should travel for two thousand miles, along
those slender copper wires, far down in the
all but tathomless Atlantic never before PEN
etrated by aught pertaining to humanity,
save when some laundering vessel has plunged
with her hapless company to the eternal ST.
lence and darkness of the abyssi Does it
seem, say all but miracle of art that the
thoughts of living men, the thoughts that we
think up here on the earth's surface, in the
cheerful light of day,-about the markets,
and the exchanges, and the seasons, and the
elections, and the treaties, and the wars, and
all the fond nothings of daily life, should
clothe themselves with elemental sparks, and
shoot with fiery speed, in moment, in the
twlnkling of an eye, from hemisphere to hem
isphere. far down among the uncouth mon
sters that wallow in the neither seas, along
the wreck-paved floor, through the oozy dun
geons of the rayless deep that the last in :
teligence of the crops, whose dancing tas.
sells will in few months be coquetting with
the west wind on these boundless prairies,
should go flashing along the Shiny decks of
old sunken galleons, which have been rottinp
for agss that messages of friendship and
love, from warm living bosoms, should burn
over the cold, green bones of men and WON.
EN-, whose hearts, once as warm as ours. burst
as the eternal CULTS closed and roared over
fhnf,,