Further on in this letter, referring to another cause for anxiety, he says:  “Law is expensive, and we must look it in the face and expect to pay roundly for it....  It is a delicate task to dispute a professional man’s charges, and, though it may be an evil to find ourselves bled so freely by lawyers, it is, perhaps, the least of evils to submit to it as gracefully as we can.”

But, while he could not escape the common lot of man in having to bear many and severe trials, there were compensatory blessings which he appreciated to the full.  His home life was happy and, in the main, serene; his farm was a source of never-ending pleasure to him; he was honored at home and abroad by those whose opinion he most valued; and he was almost daily in receipt of the news of the extension of the “Morse system” throughout the world.  Even from far-off Australia came the news of his triumph.  A letter was sent to him, written from Melbourne on December 3, 1853, by a Mr. Samuel McGowan to a friend in New York, which contains the following gratifying intelligence:—­

“Since the date of my last to you matters with me have undergone a material change.  I have come off conqueror in my hard fought battle.  The contract has been awarded to me in the faces of the representatives of Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke, Brett and other telegraphic luminaries, much to their chagrin, as I afterwards ascertained; several of them, it appears, having been leagued together in order, as they stated, to thwart a speculating Yankee.  However, matters were not so ordained, and I am as well satisfied.  I hope they will all live to be the same.”

In spite of his financial difficulties, caused by bad management of some of the lines in which he was interested, he could not resist the temptation to give liberally where his heart inclined him, and in a letter of January 9, 1854, to President Woolsey of Yale, he says:—­

“Enclosed, therefore, you have my check for one thousand dollars, which please hand to the Treasurer of the College as my subscription towards the fund which is being raised for the benefit of my dearly loved Alma Mater.

“I wish I could make it a larger sum, and, without promising what I may do at some future time, yet I will say that the prosperity of Yale College is so near my heart that, should my affairs (now embarrassed by litigations in self-defence yet undecided) assume a more prosperous aspect, I have it in mind to add something more to the sum now sent.”

The year 1854 was memorable in the history of the telegraph because of two important events—­the decision of the Supreme Court in Morse’s favor, already referred to, and the extension of his patent for another period of seven years.  The first established for all time his legal right to be called the “Inventor of the Telegraph,” and the second enabled him to reap some adequate reward for his years of privation, of struggle, and of heroic faith.  It was for a long time doubtful whether his application for an extension of his patent would be granted, and much of his time in the early part of 1854 was consumed in putting in proper form all the data necessary to substantiate his claim, and in visiting Washington to urge the justice of an extension.  From that city he wrote often to his wife in Poughkeepsie, and I shall quote from some of these letters.