Professor Thomson, now Lord Kelvin, wrote in March of this year these words of encouragement:
“If any degree of perseverance can be sufficient to deserve success, and any amount of value in any object can make it worth striving for, success ought to attend the efforts you and the directors are making for a result of world-wide beneficence.”
The account that follows has been given to show some of the petty annoyances to which from time to time Mr. Field was subjected. He arrived in New York on Friday, April 11, 1862, having come in the steamship Asia. Early in the day the ship was reported, but it was evening before he came to his home, and then he remained but a short time with his family. In a letter written to a friend in England on April 15th he says:
“I found my family all in good health and spirits, and after spending about two hours with them and other friends at my house, left for Washington, which place I reached soon after nine o’clock on Saturday morning.... During my absence in Europe some parties here, acting, as I believe, in concert with enemies in England, have been doing all in their power to injure me on both sides of the Atlantic, but without success.”
And in another letter he says:
“I have obtained a large amount of information about this wicked conspiracy to injure me in Europe and in this country. Mr. Seward and other members of the government have acted in the most honorable manner, and defeated the plans of wicked men.”
To Mr. Chase he wrote:
“I lose no time in acquainting you with the circumstances and of laying the correspondence before you. Pray tell me if they are satisfactory to you. I do not know by whom, or where, the goods were arrested.”
As far as it is possible to ascertain at this late day he had included in the correspondence forwarded to Washington an article which had been written in New York on January 18th, and said to have been shown to the New York press, but never published. It appeared in the London Herald of February 4th, and was signed “Manhattan.” There were also letters in the London Standard and Herald of March 29th dated New York, March 11th, stating that the Grand Jury had met and presented a bill of indictment against Cyrus W. Field for “treasonable proceedings with the public enemy.”
In a letter written on April 17th are these few words: