The development of inventions during this period revolutionized the world's
progress. Cities in various parts of the country had begun to communicate
with each other by electricity, when Thoreau was living at Walden; when
Emerson was writing the second series of his _Essays_; Longfellow, his
lines about cares "folding their tents like the Arabs and as silently
stealing away"; Lowell, his verses _To the Dandelion_; and Holmes, his
complaint that his humor was diminishing his practice. By the time that
Longfellow had finished _The Courtship of Miles Standish_, and Holmes _The
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_, messages had been cabled across the
Atlantic. A comparison with an event of the preceding period will show the
importance of this method of communication. The treaty of peace to end the
last war with England was signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814. On January
8, 1815, the bloody battle of New Orleans was fought. News of this fight
did not reach Washington until February 4. A week later information of the
treaty of peace was received at New York. A new process of welding the
world together had begun, and this welding was further strengthened by the
invention of that modern miracle, the telephone, in 1876.
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