Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 24.djvu/694

686 He had had all night since half past ten to consider what next was most im- portant for them to know ; and a very difficult question it was, you will observe. They had been gone nearly two years*, and much had happened. Which thing was, on the whole, the most interesting and important ? He had said we were all well. What then ?

Did you never find yourself in the same difficulty ? When your husband had come home from sea, and kissed you and the children, and wondered at their size, did you never sit silent, and have to think what you should say ? Were you never fairly relieved when little Phil said, blustering, " I got three eggs to-day." The truth is, that silence is very satisfactory intercourse if we only know all is well. When De Sauty got his original cable going, he had not much to tell after all ; only that consols were a quarter per cent higher than they were the day before. " Send me news," lisped he poor lonely myth ! from Bull's Bay to Valentia, " send me news ; they are mad for news." But how if there be no news worth sending ? What do I read in my cable despatch to-day ? Only that the Harvard crew pulled at Putney yesterday, which I knew before I opened the paper, and that there had been a riot in Spain, which I also knew. Here is a letter just brought me by the mail from Moreau, Tazewell County, Iowa. It is written by Follansbee, in a good cheerful hand. How glad I am to hear from Follansbee ! Yes ; but do I care one straw whether Follansbee planted spring wheat or winter wheat ? Not I. All I care for is Follansbee's way of telling it. All these are the remarks by which Haliburton explains the character of the messages he sent in reply to George Orcutt's autographs, which were so thoroughly satisfactory.

Should he say Mr. Borie had left the Navy Department, and Mr. Robeson come in ? Should he say the Lords had backed down on the Disendow- ment Bill? Should he say the tele- graph had been landed at Duxbury ? Should he say Ingham had removed to Tamworth ? What did they care for this ? What does anybody ever caje for facts ? Should he say that the State Constable was enforcing the liquor law on whiskey, but was winking at lager ? All this would take him a week, in the most severe condensation, and for what good ? as Haliburton asked. Yet these were the things that the news- papers told, and they told nothing else. There was a nice little poem of Jean Ingelow's in a Transcript Haliburton had with him. He said he was really tempted to spell that out. It was better worth it than all the rest of the news- paper stuff, and would be remembered a thousand years after that was for- gotten. "What they wanted," says Haliburton, " was sentiment. That is all that survives and is eternal." So he and Rob. laid out their cambric thus :

BAH. AL, WEL. SO GLAD.

Haliburton hesitated whether he would not add, "Power 5000," to indicate the full power I was using at Tam- worth. But he determined not to, and, I think, wisely. The convenience was so great, of receiving the signal at the spot where it could be answered, that for the present he thought it best that they should go on as they did. That night, however, to his dismay, clouds gathered and a grim snow-storm began. He got no observations ; and the next day it stormed so heavily that he could not lay his signals out. For me at Tamworth, I had a heavy storm all day, but at midnight it was clear ; and as soon as the regular eclipse was past George began with what we saw was an account of the great anaclysm which sent them there. You observe that Or- cutt had far greater power of commufii- cating with us than we had with him. He knew this. And it was fortunate he had. For he had, on his little world, much more of interest to tell than we had, on our large one.

18. " It stormed hard. We were all asleep, and knew nothing till morning ; the hammocks turned so slowly."

Here was another revelation and re- lief. I had always supposed that, if