I was included among these “men of fashion,”
much to my surprise. This fact, forced upon me
by contemporary opinion, did not have anything to
do with what happened in the spring of 1891, though
it was applied in that way. My congregation were
not told about it until it was too late to interfere.
This I thought wise because there might have been some
opposition to my course. I kept it a secret because
it was not a matter I could discuss with any dignity.
Then, too, I realised that it was going to affect
the entire brotherhood of newspaper artists, especially
the cartoonists. I shuddered when I thought of
the embarrassment this act of mine would cause the
country editor with only one Talmage woodcut of many
years in his art department. So I did it quietly,
without consultation.
In the spring of 1891 I shaved my whiskers.
1891-1892
On April 26, 1891, the new Tabernacle was opened.
There were three dedication services and thousands
of people came. I was fifty-nine years of age.
Up to this time everything had been extraordinary in
its conflict, its warnings. I found myself, after
over thirty years of service to the Gospel, pastor
of the biggest Protestant church in the world.
It seems to me there were more men of indomitable success
during my career in America than at any other time.
There were so many self-made men, so many who compelled
the world to listen, and feel and do as they believed—men
of remarkable energy, of prophetic genius.
Everywhere in England I had been asked about Cyrus
W. Field. He was the hero of the nineteenth century.
In his days of sickness and trouble the world remembered
him. Of all the population of the earth he was
the one man who believed that a wire could be strung
across the Atlantic. It took him twelve years
of incessant toil and fifty voyages across the Atlantic.
I remember well, in 1857, when the cable broke, how
everyone joined in the great chorus of “I told
you so.” There was a great jubilee in that
choral society of wise know-nothings. Thirty times
the grapnel searched the bottom of the sea and finally
caught the broken cable, and the pluck and ingenuity
of Cyrus W. Field was celebrated. Ocean cablegrams
had ceased to be a curiosity, but some of us remember
the day when they were. I kept a memorandum of
the two first messages across the Atlantic that passed
between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in the
summer of 1858.
From England, in the Queen’s name, came this:
“To the President of
the United States, Washington—
“The Queen desires to congratulate
the President upon the successful completion of
this great international work, in which the Queen has
taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced
that the President will join with her in fervently
hoping that the electric cable which now connects
Great Britain with the United States will prove
an additional link between the nations whose friendship
is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal
esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus
communicating with the President and renewing
to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United
States.”
The President’s answering cable was as follows:
