“I do not wish to raise too many expectations, but every day I am more and more charmed with my purchase.  I can truly say I have never before so completely realized my wishes in regard to situation, never before found so many pleasant circumstances associated together to make a home agreeable, and, so far as earth is concerned, I only wish now to have you and the rest of the family participate in the advantages with which a kind God has been pleased to indulge me.

“Strange, indeed, would it be if clouds were not in the sky, but the Sun of Righteousness will dissipate as many and as much of them as shall be right and good, and this is all that should be required.  I look not for freedom from trials; they must needs be; but the number, the kind, the form, the degree of them, I can safely leave to Him who has ordered and will still order all things well.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

JANUARY 9, 1848—­DECEMBER 19, 1849

Preparation for lawsuits.—­Letter from Colonel Shaffner.—­Morse’s reply deprecating bloodshed.—­Shaffner allays his fears.—­Morse attends his son’s wedding at Utica.—­His own second marriage.—­First of great lawsuits.—­Almost all suits in Morse’s favor.—­Decision of Supreme Court of United States.—­Extract from an earlier opinion.—­Alfred Vail leaves the telegraph business.—­Remarks on this by James D. Reid.—­Morse receives decoration from Sultan of Turkey.—­Letter to organizers of Printers’ Festival.—­Letter concerning aviation.—­Optimistic letter from Mr. Kendall.—­Humorous letter from George Wood.—­Thomas R. Walker.—­ Letter to Fenimore Cooper.—­Dr. Jackson again.—­Unfairness of the press.  —­Letter from Charles C. Ingham on art matters.—­Letter from George Vail.—­F.O.J.  Smith continues to embarrass.—­Letter from Morse to Smith.

The year 1848 was a momentous one to Morse in more ways than one.  The first of the historic lawsuits was to be begun at Frankfort, Kentucky,—­ lawsuits which were not only to establish this inventor’s claims, but were to be used as a precedent in all future patent litigation.  In his peaceful retreat on the banks of the Hudson he carefully and systematically prepared the evidence which should confound his enemies, and calmly awaited the verdict, firm in his faith that, however lowering the clouds, the sun would yet break through.  Finding relaxation from his cares and worries in the problems of his farm, he devoted every spare moment to the life out-of-doors, and drank in new strength and inspiration with every breath of the pure country air.  Although soon to pass the fifty-seventh milestone, his sane, temperate habits had kept him young in heart and vigorous in body, and in this same year he was to be rewarded for his long and lonely vigil during the dark decades of his middle life, and to enter upon an Indian Summer of happy family life.