The other letter was in answer to one from a certain Solomon Andrews, President of the Inventors’ Institute of Perth Amboy, who was making experiments in aviation, and I shall give but a few extracts:—­

“I know by experience the language of the world in regard to an untried invention.  He who will accomplish anything useful and new must steel himself against the sneers of the ignorant, and often against the unimaginative sophistries of the learned....

“In regard to the subject on which you desire an opinion, I will say that the idea of navigating the air has been a favorite one with the inventive in all ages; it is naturally suggested by the flight of a bird.  I have watched for hours together in early life, in my walks across the bridge from Boston to Charlestown, the motions of the sea-gulls....  Often have I attempted to unravel the mystery of their motion so as to bring the principle of it to bear upon this very subject, but I never experimented upon it.  Many ingenious men, however, have experimented on air navigation, and have so far succeeded as to travel in the air many miles, but always with the current of wind in their favor.  By navigating the atmosphere is meant something more than dropping down with the tide in a boat, without sails, or oars or other means of propulsion....  Birds not only rise in the air, but they can also propel themselves against the ordinary currents.  A study, then, of the conditions that enable a bird thus to defy the ordinary currents of the atmosphere seems to furnish the most likely mode of solving the problem.  Whilst a bird flies, whilst I see a mass of matter overcoming, by its structure and a power within it, the natural forces of gravitation and a current of air, I dare not say that air navigation is absurd or impossible.

“I consider the difficulties to be overcome are the combining of strength with lightness in the machine sufficient to allow of the exercise of a force without the machine from a source of power within.  A difficulty will occur in the right adaptation of propellers, and, should this difficulty be overcome, the risks of derangement of the machinery from the necessary lightness of its parts would be great, and consequently the risks to life would be greater than in any other mode of travelling.  From a wreck at sea or on shore a man may be rescued with his life, and so by the running off the track by the railroad car, the majority of passengers will be saved; but from a fall some thousands, or only hundreds, of feet through the air, not one would escape death....

“I have no time to add more than my best wishes for the success of those who are struggling with these difficulties.”

These observations, made nearly sixty-five years ago, are most pertinent to present-day conditions, when the conquest of the air has been accomplished, and along the very lines suggested by Morse, but at what a terrible cost in human life.