All the "Herald" staff
took their places in the Exhibition building for the ceremony of
opening by the Emperor, which was no doubt spectacular; but, as the
doors were to be closed until the ceremony was over, and the Emperor
rose to make the tour of the Exhibition, no one could get at the
telegraph till all was complete. I stayed outside and sacrificed the
spectacle. I had found who was to be the telegraph inspector for the
day, and I went to him with an offer to hire a wire for the day. This
was impossible, he said, as there was to be but one wire for all the
foreign press. I put my case to him as that of a beginner in the
service, to whom a success was of great importance for the future, and
asked to be allowed to declare 6000 words to follow continuously; but
this too, he said, was against the regulations. But I secured his
sympathy, and he finally promised me that if I got first on the wire,
and my message came without interruption, one section being laid
before the operator before the other was finished, they should go on
without interruption, as one message; but, if one minute lapsed and
another message came in the interval, I must take my turn with the
others.
As Taylor was an old hand, and wrote a most legible script, and style
_currente calamo_, I told him to write what he could as the ceremony
went on, and, the moment the doors were opened, to consign what he
had written to a messenger whom I had hired for the day,--an American
clerk of one of the exhibitors under some little obligation to me, a
sharp Yankee, for whose use I had hired a cab, with the fastest horse
I could find, to run back and forth between the Exhibition and the
telegraph.
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