The Great Eastern, in which steamship he sailed for home, arrived in New York late in the first week in April, and the spring and early summer of this year were passed with his family and friends. From one of the latter he received this note, written on paper which bore the red cross and the words “American Association for the Relief of Misery of Battle-fields”:
“New York, May 16, 1867.
“Many thanks, dear Mr. Field, for your letter. I shall hope to have the pleasure of meeting you abroad. But in any event I wish you and your family prosperity and increase of your well-earned honors, and your rightful self-complacency in your victories over time and space, and at last over this world and its last enemy.
“Affectionately yours,
“H. W. Bellows.”
July 1, 1867, he writes:
“Left last Wednesday for Canada and the provinces; to-day at Ottawa. Returned to New York for a few days, and then for six weeks was in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; on August 15th at the Government House, St. John’s, Newfoundland.”
Many minor trials came to the telegraph companies during these first years of ocean telegraphy, and this letter refers to some of them:
“New York, October 1, 1867.
“My dear Mr. Deane,—In relation to the tariff, and particularly that part touching ciphers, I must again appeal to you, and I do wish my words could carry conviction to your mind of the fatal tendency of the course we are carried into by your rules....