“No, I have made the sacrifice of my profession to establish an invention which is doing mankind a great service.  I pursued it long enough to found an institution which, I trust, is to flourish long after I am gone, and be the means of educating a noble class of men in Art, to be an honor and praise to our beloved country when peace shall once more bless us throughout all our borders in one grand brotherhood of States.”

The many letters to his children are models of patient exhortation and cheerful optimism, when sometimes the temptation to indulge in pessimism was strong.  I shall give, as an example, one written on May 9, 1864, to two of his sons who had returned to school at Newport:—­

“Now we hope to have good reports of your progress in your studies.  In spring, you know, the farmers sow their seed which is to give them their harvest at the close of the summer.  If they were not careful to put the seed in the ground, thinking it would do just as well about August or September, or if they put in very little seed, you can see that they cannot expect to reap a good or abundant crop.

“Now it is just so in regard to your life.  You are in the springtime of life.  It is seed time.  You must sow now or you will reap nothing by-and-by, or, if anything, only weeds.  Your teachers are giving you the seed in your various studies.  You cannot at present understand the use of them, but you must take them on trust; you must believe that your parents and teachers have had experience, and they know what will be for your good hereafter, what studies will be most useful to you in after life.  Therefore buckle down to your studies diligently and very soon you will get to love your studies, and then it will be a pleasure and not a task to learn your lessons.

“We miss your noise, but, although agreeable quiet has come in place of it, we should be willing to have the noise if we could have our dear boys near us.  You are, indeed, troublesome pleasures, but, after all, pleasant troubles.  When you are settled in life and have a family around you, you will better understand what I mean.”

In spite of the disorganization of business caused by the war, the value of telegraphic property was rapidly increasing, and new lines were being constantly built or proposed.  Morse refers to this in a letter of June 25, 1864, to his old friend George Wood:—­

“To you, as well as to myself, the rapid progress of the Telegraph throughout the world must seem wonderful, and with me you will, doubtless, often recur to our friend Annie’s inspired message—­’What hath God wrought.’  It is, indeed, his marvellous work, and to Him be the glory.

“Early in the history of the invention, in forecasting its future, I was accustomed to predict with confidence, ’It is destined to go round the world,’ but I confess I did not expect to live to see the prediction fulfilled.  It is quite as wonderful to me also that, with the thousand attempts to improve my system, with the mechanical skill of the world concentrated upon improving the mechanism, the result has been beautiful complications and great ingenuity, but no improvement.  I have the gratification of knowing that my system, everywhere known as the ’Morse system,’ is universally adopted throughout the world, because of its simplicity and its adaptedness to universality.”