"I am keeping ready to close this at a moment's warning, so give all
manner of love to all friends, kisses to whom kisses are due. I am
getting almost impatient at the delays we necessarily encounter, but our
great work must not be neglected. I have seen enough to know now that the
Atlantic Telegraph is sure to be established, _for it is practicable_."

Was it a foreboding of what was to happen that caused him to add:--

"_We may not succeed in our first attempt_; some little neglect or
accident may foil our present efforts, but the present enterprise will
result in gathering stores of experience which will make the next effort
certain. Not that I do not expect success now, but accidental failure now
will not be the evidence of its impracticability.

"Our principal electrical difficulty is the slowness with which we must
manipulate in order to be intelligible; twenty words in sixteen minutes
is now the rate. I am confident we can get more after awhile, but the
Atlantic Telegraph has its own rate of talking and cannot be urged to
speak faster, any more than any other orator, without danger of becoming
unintelligible.

"_Three o'clock P.M._ We are in Valencia Harbor. We shall soon come to
anchor. A pilot who has just come to show us our anchorage ground says:
'There are a power of people ashore.'"

"_August 8._ Yesterday, at half past six P.M., all being right, we
commenced again paying out the heavy shore-end, of which we had about
eight miles to be left on the rocky bottom of the coast, to bear the
attrition of the waves and to prevent injury to the delicate nerve which
it incloses in its iron mail, and which is the living principle of the