Writing to his daughter, Mrs. Lind, in Porto Rico on February 8, he says:—­

“The Telegraph operates to the perfect satisfaction of the public, as you perhaps see by the laudatory notices of the papers in all parts of the country.  I am now in a state of unpleasant suspense waiting the passage of the bill for the extension of the Telegraph to New York.

“I am in hopes they will take it up and pass it next week; if they should not, I shall at once enter into arrangements with private companies to take it and extend it.

“I do long for the time, if it shall be permitted, to have you with your husband and little Charles around me.  I feel my loneliness more and more keenly every day.  Fame and money are in themselves a poor substitute for domestic happiness; as means to that end I value them.  Yesterday was the sad anniversary (the twentieth) of your dear mother’s death, and I spent the most of it in thinking of her....”

“Thursday, February 12. I dined at the Russian Ambassador’s Tuesday.  It was the most gorgeous dinner-party I ever attended in any country.  Thirty-six sat down to table; there were eleven Senators, nearly half the Senate....  The table, some twenty or twenty-five feet long, was decorated with immense gilt vases of flowers on a splendid plateau of richly chased gilt ornaments, and candelabra with about a hundred and fifty lights.  We were ushered into the house through eight liveried servants, who afterward waited on us at table.

“I go to-morrow evening to Mr. Wickliffe’s, Postmaster General, and, probably, on Wednesday evening next to the President’s.  The new President, Polk, arrived this evening amid the roar of cannon.  He will be inaugurated on the 4th of March, and I presume I shall be there.

“I am most anxiously waiting the action of Congress on the Telegraph.  It is exceedingly tantalizing to suffer so much loss of precious time that cannot be recalled.”

This time there was no eleventh-hour passage of the bill, for Congress adjourned without reaching it, and while this, in the light of future events, was undoubtedly a tactical error on the part of the Government, it inured to the financial benefit of the inventor himself.  The question now arose of the best means of extending the business of the telegraph through private companies, and Morse keenly felt the need of a better business head than he possessed to guide the enterprise through the shoals and quicksands of commerce.  He was fortunate in choosing as his business and legal adviser the Honorable Amos Kendall.

Mr. James D. Reid, one of the early telegraphers and a staunch and faithful friend of Morse’s, thus speaks of Mr. Kendall in his valuable book “The Telegraph in America":—­