Page:Matthew Fontaine Maury 1806-1873.pdf/15

This page has been validated.

three years later, he was reinstated with the advanced rank of Commander, as of the date of his retirement.

Meantime, the Government had approved Maury's purpose of keeping the Nation to the front in Nautical Science. The Secretary of the Navy was directed by Congress to detail suitable vessels to test the new routes and to perfect the discoveries made by Maury. From time to time these vessels, with capable officers, were dispatched on this service. Among these, on the brig Dolphin, Lieutenant Berryman was employed on special service connected with the Hydrographic Office. His soundings with [John Mercer] Brooke's deep-sea sounding apparatus established, beyond a doubt, the practicability of laying a submarine telegraphic cable between Newfoundland and Ireland.

On this subject, there are on file in the National Observatory hundreds of letters to officials, scientists and business men, proving Maury's part in this great enterprise, none more briefly convincing than the generous pronouncement by Cyrus W.[West] Field. What did he say at that dinner in New York celebrating the first transmission of the first message of cable? When asked to give an account of the work he arose and replied: "I am a man of few words. Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work."

Brains, Money, Work! and the greatest of these is no, let us make no invidious comparisons. Truly, in classical American slang, "Money talks," but Cyrus W. Field, the Worker, knew much about relative values; he sandwiches Money between Brains and Work to give it the rich flavor of Service! What would Maury have us do to keep alive the beneficent ferment of his Brain? We may learn only by an open-minded study of his life, as revealed in letters to family, friends and officials; they are unconscious self-revelations—the portrayal of Maury by Maury! His greatness and goodness, his tenderness and fortitude, his patriotism and faith are all there! Would that they were accessible to the youth of the world, which he served so long and so well!

The limit of this sketch permits but a brief reference to his address delivered in June, 1855, before the Washington and the Jefferson Literary Societies of the University of Virginia; startlingly prophetic was it of that fratricidal conflict which, six years

11