“I as a director of an electric telegraph company, however, should be ashamed of myself if I did not acknowledge what we owe him.  But he threatens to go further still, and promises that, if we do not, he will carry out a communication between England and Newfoundland across the Atlantic.  I am nearly pledged to pay him a visit on the other side of the Atlantic to see what he is about, and, if he perseveres in his obstinate attempt to reach England, I believe I must join him in his endeavors. [Cheers.]

“To think that he has united all the stripes and stars of America, which are increasing day by day—­and I hope they will increase until they are too numerous to mention—­that he has extended his system to Canada and is about to unite those portions of the world to Europe, is a glorious thing for any man; and, although I have done something in the same cause myself, I confess I almost envy Professor Morse for having forced from an unwilling rival a willing acknowledgment of his services. [Cheers.]

“I am proud to see Professor Morse this side of the water.  I beg to give you ‘The health of Professor Morse,’ and may he long live to enjoy the high reputation he has attained throughout the world!”

Soon after this, with these flattering words still ringing in his ears, he and his party sailed for New York and, once arrived at home, the truth of the trite saying that “A prophet is not without honor save in his own country” was soon to be brought to his attention.  While he had been feted and honored abroad, while he had every reason to believe that his petition to the European governments for some pecuniary compensation would, in time, be granted, he returned to be plunged anew into vexatious litigation, intrigues and attacks upon his purse, his fame, and his good name.  On November 27, 1856, he refers to his greatest cross in a letter to Mr. Kendall:—­

“I have just returned from Boston, having accomplished the important duty for which I alone went there, to wit, to say ‘yes’ before a gentleman having U.S.  Commissioner after his name, instead of ‘yes’ before one who had only S. Commissioner after his name; and this at a cost of exactly twenty dollars, or, if the one dollar thrown away in New York upon the S. Commissioner be added, twenty-one dollars and three days of time, to say nothing of sundry risks of accidents by land and water travel.

“Well, if it will lead to a thorough separation of all interests and all intercourse with F.O.J., I shall not consider the time and money lost, yet, in conversation with Mr. Curtis, I have little hope of a change in Judge Curtis’s views of the point in which he decides that Smith has an inchoate right, and our only chance of success is in the reversal of that decision by the Supreme Bench, and that after another year’s suspense....