“In reply to your query for what sum I would sell my share of the patent right in the Telegraph, which amounts to one half, I frankly say that, if one hundred and ten thousand dollars shall be secured to me in cash, current funds in the United States, or stocks at cash value, such as I may be disposed to accept if presented, so that in six months from this date I shall realize that sum, I will assign over all my rights and privileges in the Telegraph in the United States.

“I offer it at this price, not that I estimate the value of the invention so low, for it is perfectly demonstrable that the sum above mentioned is not half its value, but that I may have my own mind free to be occupied in perfecting the system, and in a general superintendence of it, unembarrassed by the business arrangements necessary to secure its utmost usefulness and value.”

A Mr. Fry of Philadelphia had also made an offer, and, referring to this, he wrote to Smith from New York, on July 17:  “A letter from Mr. Fry, of Philadelphia, in answer to the proposals which you sent, I have just received.  I wish much to see you, as I cannot move in this matter until I know your views.  I am here for about a fortnight and wish some arrangements made by which our business can be transacted without the necessity of so much waiting and so much writing.”

All these negotiations seem to have come to nothing, and I have only mentioned them as showing Morse’s willingness to part with his interest for much less than he knew it was worth, in order that he might not prove an obstacle in the expansion of the system by being too mercenary, and so that he might obtain some measure of freedom from care.

Mr. F.O.J.  Smith, while still proving himself a thorn in the flesh to Morse in many ways, had compiled a Telegraph Dictionary which he called:  “The Secret Corresponding Vocabulary, adapted for Use to Morse’s Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, and also in conducting Written Correspondence transmitted by the Mails, or otherwise.”  The dedication reads as follows: 

To Professor Samuel F.B.  Morse, Inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph

Sir,—­The homage of the world during the last half-century has been, and will ever continue to be, accorded to the name and genius of the illustrious American philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, for having first taught mankind that the wild and terrific ways and forces of the electric fluid, as it flies and flashes through the rent atmosphere, or descends to the surface of the earth, are guided by positive and fixed laws, as much as the movements of more sluggish matter in the physical creation, and that its terrible death-strokes may be rendered harmless by proper scientific precautions.