Mr. Reid has given a detailed account of these messages in his “Telegraph in America,” but I shall not pause to reproduce them here; neither shall I quote from the eloquent speeches which followed, delivered by General N.P.  Banks, the Reverend H.M.  Gallagher, G.K.  Walcott, and James D. Reid.  After Miss Antoinette Sterling had sung “Auld Lang Syne,” to the great delight of the audience, who recalled her several times, Chief Justice Charles P. Daly introduced Professor Morse in an appropriate address.

As the white-haired inventor, in whose honor this great demonstration had been organized, stepped forward to deliver his, valedictory, he was greeted with another round of cheering and applause.  At first almost overcome by emotion, he soon recovered his self-control, and he read his address in a clear, resonant voice which carried to every part of the house.  The address was a long one, and as most of it is but a recapitulation of what has been already given, I shall only quote from it in part:—­

“Friends and children of the telegraph,—­When I was solicited to be present this evening, in compliance with the wishes of those who, with such zeal and success, responded to the suggestion of one of your number that a commemorative statue should be erected in our unrivaled Park, and which has this day been placed in position and unveiled, I hesitated to comply.  Not that I did not feel a wish in person to return to you my heartfelt thanks for this unique proof of your personal regard, but truly from a fear that I could use no terms which would adequately express my appreciation of your kindness.  Whatever I say must fall short of expressing the grateful feelings or conflicting emotions which agitate me on an occasion so unexampled in the history of invention.  Gladly would I have shrunk from this public demonstration were it not that my absence to-night, under the circumstances, might be construed into an apathy which I do not feel, and which your overpowering kindness would justly rebuke....

“You have chosen to impersonate in my humble effigy an invention which, cradled upon the ocean, had its birth in an American ship.  It was nursed and cherished not so much from personal as from patriotic motives.  Forecasting its future, even at its birth, my most powerful stimulus to perseverance through all the perils and trials of its early days—­and they were neither few nor insignificant—­was the thought that it must inevitably be world-wide in its application, and, moreover, that it would everywhere be hailed as a grateful American gift to the nations.  It is in this aspect of the present occasion that I look upon your proceedings as intended, not so much as homage to an individual, as to the invention, ’whose lines [from America] have gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.’