Heroes of the Telegraph

During the voyage of six weeks the artist jotted his crude ideas in his sketch-book, which afterwards became a testimony to their date. That he cherished hopes of his invention may be gathered from his words on landing, 'Well, Captain Pell, should you ever hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was made on the good ship Sully.' Soon after his return his brothers gave him a room on the fifth floor of a house at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York. For a long time it was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bedroom. With his livelihood to earn by his brush, and his invention to work out, Morse was now fully occupied. His diet was simple; he denied himself the pleasures of society, and employed his leisure in making models of his types. The studio was an image of his mind at this epoch. Rejected pictures looked down upon his clumsy apparatus, type-moulds lay among plaster-casts, the paint-pot jostled the galvanic battery, and the easel shared his attention with the lathe. By degrees the telegraph allured him from the canvas, and he only painted enough to keep the wolf from the door. His national picture, 'The Signing of the First Compact on Board the Mayflower,' was never finished, and the 300 dollars which had been subscribed for it were finally returned with interest. For Morse by nature was proud and independent, with a sensitive horror of incurring debt. He would rather endure privation than solicit help or lie under a humiliating obligation. His mother seems to have been animated with a like spirit, for the Hon. Amos Kendall informs us that she had suffered much through the kindness of her husband in becoming surety for his friends, and that when she was dying she exacted a promise from her son that he would never endanger his peace of mind and the comfort of his home by doing likewise.