“The gateways at the entrance had been arched with evergreens and wreathed with flowers.  As the carriage containing their loved proprietor drove along the gravelled roads we noticed that several of the domestics, unable to restrain their welcomes, ran to his carriage and gave and received salutations.  After a free interchange of salutations and a general ‘shake-hands,’ the people withdrew and left their honored guest to the retirement of his own beautiful home.

“So the world reverences its great men, and so it ought.  In Professor Morse we find those simple elements of greatness which elevate him infinitely above the hero of any of the world’s sanguinary conflicts, or any of the most successful aspirants after political power.  He has benefited not only America and the world, but has dignified and benefited the whole race.”

His friends and neighbors desired to honor him still further by a public reception, but this he felt obliged to decline, and in his letter of regret he expresses the following sentiments:  “If, during my late absence abroad, I have received unprecedented honors from European nations, convened in special congress for the purpose, and have also received marks of honor from individual Sovereigns and from Scientific bodies, all which have gratified me quite as much for the honor reflected by them upon my country as upon myself, there are none of these testimonials, be assured, which have so strongly touched my heart as this your beautiful tribute of kindly feeling from esteemed neighbors and fellow-citizens.”

Among the letters which had accumulated during his absence, Morse found one, written some time previously, from a Mr. Reibart, who had published his name as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States.  In courteously declining this honor Morse drily adds:  “There are hundreds, nay thousands, more able (not to say millions more willing) to take any office they can obtain, and perform its functions more faithfully and with more benefit to the country.  While this is the case I do not feel that the country will suffer should one like myself, wearied with the struggles and litigations of half a century, desire to be excused from encountering the annoyances and misapprehensions inseparable from political life.”

Thanks to the successful efforts of his good friend, Mr. Kendall, he was now financially independent, so much so that he felt justified in purchasing, in the fall of the year 1859, the property at 5 West Twenty-second Street, New York, where the winters of the remaining years of his life were passed, except when he was abroad.  This house has now been replaced by a commercial structure, but a bronze tablet marks the spot where once stood the old-fashioned brown stone mansion.

While his mind was comparatively at rest regarding money matters, he was not yet free from vexatious litigation, and his opinion of lawyers is tersely expressed in a letter to Mr. Kendall of December 27, 1859:  “I have not lost my respect for law but I have for its administrators; not so much for any premeditated dishonesty as for their stupidity and want of just insight into a case.”