he had been able to secure. Now, he could not obtain help from a human
being; but he had become able to act independently of any assistance.

He had made a careful study of the subject, in his thoroughly practical
way, and had become convinced that such a line was feasible, and would
be remunerative. At his instance a convention of telegraph men met in
the city of New York, to consider the project. The feeling in this
convention was extremely unfavorable to it. A committee reported against
it unanimously, on three grounds--the country was destitute of timber,
the line would be destroyed by the Indians, and if constructed and
maintained, it would not pay expenses. Mr. Sibley found himself alone.
An earnest appeal which he made from the report of the committee was
received with derisive laughter. The idea of running a telegraph line
through what was then a wilderness, roamed over for between one and two
thousand miles of its breadth by bands of savages, who of course would
destroy the line as soon as it was put up, and where repairs would be
difficult and useless, even if the other objections to it were out of
the way, struck the members of the convention as so exquisitely
ludicrous that it seemed as if they would never be done laughing about
it. If Mr. Sibley had advocated a line to the moon, they would hardly
have seen in it greater evidence of lunacy. When he could be heard, he
rose again and said: "Gentlemen, you may laugh, but if I was not so old,
I would build the line myself." Upon this, of course, they laughed
louder than ever. As they laughed, he grew mad, and shouted: "Gentlemen,
I will bar the years, and do it." And he did it. Without help from any
one, for every man who claimed a right to express an opinion upon it
scouted the project as chimerical, and no capitalist would put a dollar
in it, Hiram Sibley built the line of telegraph to San Francisco,
risking in it all he had in the world. He set about the work with his
customary energy, all obstacles vanished, and the line was completed in