“I earnestly beseech you to give up all idea of going out again on the cable-laying expedition.  Your true friends do not comprehend how it is that you give your time, your labor, and your fame to build up an interest deliberately and unscrupulously hostile to all their interests and your own....  I believe that Peter Cooper is the only man among them who is sincerely your friend.  As to Field, I have as little faith in him as I have in F.O.J.  Smith.  If you could get Cooper to take a stand in favor of the faithful observance of the contract for connection with the N.E.  Union Line at Boston, he can put an end to all trouble, if, at the same time, he will refuse to concur in a further extension of their lines South.”

In spite of this warning, or, perhaps, because Peter Cooper succeeded in overcoming Mr. Kendall’s objections, Morse did go out on the next cable-laying expedition, and yet he found in the end that Mr. Kendall’s suspicions were by no means unjustified.  But of this in its proper place.

The United States Government had placed the steam frigate Niagara at the disposal of the cable company, and on her Morse, as the electrician of the American Company, sailed from New York on April 21, 1857.  Arriving in London, he was again honored by many attentions and entertainments, including a dinner at the Lord Mayor’s.  The loading of the cable on board the ships designated for that purpose consumed, necessarily, some time, and Morse took advantage of this delay to visit Paris, at the suggestion of our Minister, Mr. Mason, in order to confer with the Premier, Count Walewski, with regard to the pecuniary indemnity which all agreed was due to him from the nations using his invention.  This conference bore fruit, as we shall see later on.

In a letter to his wife from Paris he makes this amusing comment on the fashions of the day, after remarking on the dearth of female beauty in France:—­

“You must consider me now as speaking of features only, for as to form, alas, that is under such a total crinoline eclipse that this season of total darkness in fashion’s firmament forbids any speculation on that subject.  The reign of crinoline amplitude is not only not removed, but is more dominant than ever.  Who could have predicted that, because an heir to the French throne was in expectancy, all womankind, old and young, would so far sympathize with the amiable consort of Napoleon III as to be, in appearance at least, likely to flood the earth with heirs; that grave parliaments would be in solemn debate upon the pressing necessity of enlarging the entrances of royal palaces in order to meet the exigencies of enlarged crinolines; that the new carriages were all of increased dimensions to accommodate the crinoline?  But so it is; it is the age of crinoline....  Talk no longer of chairs, they are no longer visible.  Talk no longer of tete-a-tetes; two crinolines might get in sight of each other, at least by the use of the lorgnette, but as for conversation, that is out of the question except by speaking trumpets, by signs, and who knows but in this age of telegraphs crinoline may not follow the world’s fashion and be a patroness of the Morse system.”