“By the way, I digress a little to inform you how I got my segars on shore.  When we first went ashore I filled my pockets and hat as full as I could and left the rest in the top of my trunk intending to come and get them immediately.  I came back and took another pocket load and left about eight or nine dozen on the top of my clothes.  I went up into the city again and forgot the remainder until it was too late either to take them out or hide them under the clothes.  So I waited trembling (for contraband goods subject the whole trunk to seizure), but the custom-house officer, being very good-natured and clever, saw them and took them up.  I told him they were only for my own smoking and there were so few that they were not worth seizing.  ‘Oh,’ says he, ’I shan’t touch them; I won’t know they are here,’ and then shut down the trunk again.  As he smoked, I gave him a couple of dozen for his kindness.”

What a curious commentary on human nature it is that even the most pious, up to our own time, can see no harm in smuggling and bribery.  And, as another instance of how the standards of right and wrong change with the changing years, further on in this same letter to his strict and pious parents young Morse says:—­

“I have just received letters and papers from you by the Galen which has arrived.  I was glad to see American papers again.  I see by them that the lottery is done drawing.  How has my ticket turned out?  If the weight will not be too great for one shipload, I wish you would send the money by the next vessel.”

The lottery was for the benefit of Harvard College.

“September 3, 1811. I have finished a drawing which I intended to offer at the Academy for admission.  Mr. Allston told me it would undoubtedly admit me, as it was better than two thirds of those generally offered, but advised me to draw another and remedy some defects in handling the chalks (to which I am not at all accustomed), and he says I shall enter with some eclat.  I showed it to Mr. West and he told me it was an extraordinary production, that I had talent, and only wanted knowledge of the art to make a great painter.”

In a letter to his friends, Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, dated September 17, 1811, he says:—­

“I was astonished to find such a difference in the encouragement of art between this country and America.  In America it seemed to lie neglected, and only thought to be an employment suited to a lower class of people; but here it is the constant subject of conversation, and the exhibitions of the several painters are fashionable resorts.  No person is esteemed accomplished or well educated unless he possesses almost an enthusiastic love for paintings.  To possess a gallery of pictures is the pride of every nobleman, and they seem to vie with each other in possessing the most choice and most numerous collection....  I visited Mr. Copley a few days since.  He is very old and infirm.  I think his age is upward