day presented the philosopher with two thousand crowns. It may here be added that Napoleon offered a prize of sixty thousand francs to any one who would make as valuable a discovery respecting electricity as had Franklin or Volta. Napoleon also provided for a yearly prize of three thousand francs for the best experiments with what is called the galvanic fluid. This is not the place to linger to give an account of the experience of the American inventor in Europe. In France the patent which he procured was practically worthless. The despotic government of the period was afraid to allow the people to employ an agent which might be useful to them in combining at a given instant against the government. A time was to come when Napoleon III. was to act in some respects in a highly generous manner to Morse and was to unite with other governments in making him a pecuniary return for his invention, but in the meanwhile Prof. Morse was becoming poorer and poorer. When he finally, after making an arrangement with the Russian government which in time might be worth something to him, returned to America he found that during the years that he had been absent from his native land his government had given little or no attention to the telegraph.

Without pausing to dwell upon the professor's struggle with poverty, or of the new testimonials which men of science presented to him respecting his invention,—or of the electrical experiments which Prof. Henry of Princeton College, who in his department had perhaps no superior in the world,-made for Prof. Morse, it is interesting to note that Congress finally-amidst jeers in the House of Representatives-appropriated by a majority of but six votes, thirty thousand dollars to enable Prof. Morse to construct a telegraph on a scale which would prove to the world whether it was or was not of value to a great

nation. In the United States Senate the bill passed in silence as the clock was about striking midnight on the last night of a session. Prof. Morse was a man of deep Evangelical convictions. He had sat in the gallery of Congress when his invention had been treated with derision. From the Senate chamber he had retired on Feb. 24th, 1842-the last day of the session—as night was settling on the Capitol of the United States. A Senator had informed him that between one and two hundred measures would have to be passed upon before the appropriation for a telegraph could be taken up and that it was impossible for the Senate to act upon an electric telegraph bill. Sad-hearted and with only twenty-five cents in his pocket-without money with which to return to New York,-Morse retired to enjoy a tranquil slumber. He firmly believed that a Divine providence would not forsake him.

There has been a temptation felt on the part of some of Morse's biographers to consider the pleasantly affecting manner in which the news of what had been done for him in the Senate just before midnight, was conveyed to him by a young lady, as being romantic. The truth is, however, that the young lady was very young and the daughter of an old college friend at whose house he was a guest-a friend who was the United States Commissioner of Patents and who had labored among his friends in the Senate while Morse was asleep and had had the pleasure of seeing the bill to give the telegraph a trial, pass just as the Senate was about being dissolved. His daughter Miss Ellsworth, was doubtless a kind-hearted girl who broke the news to the professor in a peculiarly kind manner and it was fitting that Prof. Morse should give to the world a proof of the beautiful friendship which existed between himself and Miss Ellsworth by engaging

that she should be the first one to send a message on the telegraph when it should be formally tested in the presence of the world. In due time President Polk, who was a graduate of the University of North Carolina, signed the bill which was to appropriate thirty thousand dollars to enable Prof. Morse to ultimately prove to the world not only that man could instantaneously correspond with his fellows though separated by fifty or one hundred miles, but that he could in a fraction of a second correspond with friends who might be living in the most distant tropics or in either of the hemispheres.

Well it was that the Government of the United States had not longer delayed to give due attention to the electric telegraph. To a friend Prof. Morse wrote: "My personal funds were reduced to a fraction of a dollar, and, had the passage of the bill failed from any cause, there would have been little prospect for another attempt on my part to introduce to the world my new invention." With energy Prof. Morse set to work to connect by telegraph Baltimore and the national capital. He made many experiments with electricity on a scale which had before been beyond his means to make. On Aug. 10th, 1843, he wrote to John C. Spencer, Secretary of the Treasury, that he had proved the truth of a law of electricity which was destined to be of the grandest consequence in telegraphy. After describing his experiments he informed the Secretary of War that his experiments had been performed in the presence of Professors Renwick, Draper, Ellet and Schaeffer and his assistants Professors Fisher and Gale; and that Professors Silliman, Henry, Torrey and Dr. Chilton would have been present had they not been detained by their official duties. He added: "The practical inference from this law is, that a telegraphic communication on the Electric Mag

netic plan may with certainty be established ACROSS THE ATLANTIC OCEAN!" Prof. Morse further added: "Startling as this may now seem, I am confident the time will come when this project will be realized." The Secretary of War replied that he was gratified with the results of his experiments and that he trusted that the country would have reason to be satisfied with his labors. In the meanwhile the heaviest trial in some respects which Prof. Morse had yet had to bear settled upon him. He had intended to cover the telegraph wires with a coating of lead and to lay them under ground all the way from Washington to Baltimore. After spending in so doing about twenty-three thousand dollars of the government appropriation of thirty thousand dollars he had made the startling and at first very sad discovery that the electric current would not take kindly to his arrangement for underground wires. His friends about him feared that his mind and strength would give way. Years before he had suggested to Secretary Woodbury a plan for using posts to support the wires. He decided to try such a plan, but he had to encounter the difficulty of doing so in a way which would keep captive the electric current until it had performed his bidding. The professor had to decide upon a practicable plan by which the wires when they touched the posts would be insulated. Two plans were suggested to him, one, by Alfred Vail, and the other by Mr. Ezra Cornell-who afterwards founded the University which is called by his name and is now one of the wealthiest universities in the great State of New York. Mr. Cornell was a man of energy and of remarkable business and practical intelligence. He had studied at a public school and had at one time of his life been a school teacher. He had acquired habits of thought which were to be very useful to Mr. Morse. Mr. Cornell, who was engaged by

Morse to help him in various ways, showed remarkable intelligence. He also privately studied about electricity in the Congressional library. The plan for insulating the wires with the aid of glass where they were supported by poles did not receive the preference by Prof. Morse, over the plan suggested by Mr. Vail. The sorely tried profes sor gave directions that expensive measures which the new plan demanded should be taken. Happily at this critical juncture Morse visited Prof. Henry of Princeton College. Prof. Henry showed him that he had made a mistake in adopting the plan for insulating the wires which he had decided to adopt, and that the mistake must end in disaster as had his first plan of covering the wires with lead and earth-but that if he would adopt the one of the two plans which he had rejected he would be enabled to accomplish his purpose. Prof. Morse returned to his work, countermanded the expensive measures which he had decided to apply to the wires, and adopted the plan endorsed by Prof. Henry. Sad indeed it would. have been for Morse had he been obliged to spend on costly experiments so much money as not to have enough left with which to complete his telegraph between Washington and Baltimore.

On May 24th, 1844, under circumstances peculiarly exciting and agreeable, the telegraph was formally opened. Miss Ellsworth was called upon to send to Prof. Morse * the first message. She knew that he was imbued with the faith of the Puritans and that through all the trials through which he had passed he had looked for the support and the blessing of the Almighty. With great delicacy she selected a part of a verse from the Bible to flash over the wire to her friend. Her message was: "What has God wrought?" A member of Congress named Seymour, who was afterwards Governor of Connecticut,