"The days of steam-power are already numbered.
I may not live to see it, but you will. This new force
is almost within my grasp. I know people laugh, but
so they have always done. All inventors who have
benefited mankind have first been received with ridicule.
I can expect no better treatment. But I have
no fear of the result. The steady destruction of our
forests and the eating up of our coal-fields must throw
us back on chemistry for our working power. There
is only one solution of this problem--it lies in the
employment of a force which this machine will compel
to our uses. I have not perfected the apparatus
yet, as you see, but it is only a question of time. To-
morrow, perhaps, or next week, or next year--but it
will surely come. See what Charles Bright and this
Mr. Cyrus Field are accomplishing. If it astonishes
you to realize that we will soon talk to each other
across the ocean, why should the supplanting of steam
by a new energy seem so extraordinary? The problems
which they have worked out along the lines of
electricity, I am trying to work out along the lines
of galvanism. Both will ultimately benefit the
human race.

And while he talked you would have listened with
your eyes and ears wide open, and your heart too, and
believed every word he said, no matter how practical
you might have been or how unwilling at first to be
convinced.