Vox Meditantis

Friday, 29th October 1886
Telegraph Office, Broadway, Lower Manhattan

The rain has cleared, though the streets remain slick with yesterday’s downpour. I have locked the till and drawn the cloth over the instruments for the night, my fingers stiff from transcribing messages these ten hours past. The key hangs heavy on its chain at my waist – twenty years I have carried it, first at the old office on Nassau Street, now here where the wires hum with commerce and calamity alike.

Yesterday the city gave itself over to spectacle. All morning the fog lay thick upon the harbour whilst whistles and cannon shook the windows. President Cleveland stood amongst the great men on Bedloe’s Island to dedicate that colossal statue, Liberty Enlightening the World, though precious little light penetrated the grey curtain overhead. By afternoon the rain drove the crowds from Broadway, yet still they tore paper from the counting-houses and flung it down upon the parade – a strange, wasteful jubilation. I swept sodden scraps from our threshold this morning.

To-day the keys have clicked without cease beneath my hand, tapping out reports of cotton prices and railway shares, obituaries and wedding announcements. Each message is a lock I open, translating the dots and dashes into words that will reach some distant reader. Yet I wonder how many read with true understanding. My eldest brought home a primer from the common school this week, its pages thin and poorly stitched. The teacher has forty children in her charge and no coal yet for the stove. What knowledge can take root in such stony ground?

I think upon a question that occupied my mind as I walked home by gaslight: What doth it mean to keep a child’s heart? Not the heedlessness of youth, surely, nor that carelessness which shirks duty. Rather, I believe it must be the capacity for wonder at simple truths, the eagerness to learn what one does not yet know. A child will ask “Why?” and “How?” without shame, whilst we grown persons lock such questions away, fearing to appear ignorant.

My own daughter, just seven years old, watched me transcribe a message yesterday and asked how the lightning in the wire could carry words. I confess I gave her but a poor answer, for I do not fully comprehend it myself. Yet her question was not foolish. It was the inquiry of one who still believes that understanding is possible, that the world’s mechanisms might be unlocked by patient study. That is what we must not lose – that willingness to sit at the feet of knowledge, however humble our station.

I have set aside three cents each week toward a subscription to the reading room at Cooper Union. There are books there on natural philosophy and history that might improve my understanding, that I might better instruct my children. For what good is it to carry the key to so much information if I cannot interpret what passes through my hands? The telegraph brings news of discoveries and debates from across the continent, yet I am but the instrument, not the reader.

The lamp-lighter has passed. I must go home to prepare supper and hear the children’s lessons. My youngest still struggles with his letters, though he is quick with sums. I must not grow weary in the teaching of them, for education is the only inheritance I can offer – no land, no fortune, only the tools to unlock what learning they may acquire through their own diligence.

The key turns in the lock. The office darkens behind me.

The Gilded Age saw the 28th October 1886 dedication of the Statue of Liberty in a rain‑swept New York Harbour, presided over by President Grover Cleveland and marked by the city’s first ticker‑tape celebration along Broadway. Conceived by Édouard de Laboulaye and realised by Frédéric‑Auguste Bartholdi with engineering by Gustave Eiffel, the statue was a French gift, while Americans financed the pedestal through broad public subscription. The day featured vast civic and nautical parades, cannon and steam‑whistle salutes, and an unveiling on Bedloe’s Island before immense crowds despite fog and rain. In the years following, Liberty became entwined with immigration history as nearby Ellis Island opened in 1892 as the principal federal inspection station. The 1886 festivities also inaugurated New York’s enduring tradition of ticker‑tape parades honouring notable events and figures.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.