“It was the device and purpose of those who sought to rob him of his honors and his rights to depreciate his intellectual ability and his scientific attainments.  But among all the men of science and of learning in the law, there was not one who was a match for him when he gave his mind to a subject which required his perfect mastery....

“He drew up the brief with his own hand for one of the distinguished counsel in a great lawsuit involving his patent rights, and his lawyer said it was the argument that carried conviction to every unprejudiced mind.

“Such was the versatility and variety of his mental endowments that he would have been great in any department of human pursuits.  His wonderful rapidity of thought was associated with patient, plodding perseverance, a combination rare but mightily effective.  He leaped to a possible conclusion, and then slowly developed the successive steps by which the end was gained and the result made secure.  He covered thousands of pages with his pencil notes, annotated large and numerous volumes, filled huge folios with valuable excerpts from newspapers, illustrated processes of thought with diagrams, and was thus fortified and enriched with stores of knowledge and masses of facts, so digested, combined and arranged, that he had them at his easy command to defend the past or to help him onward to fresh conquests in the fields of truth.  Yet such was his modesty and reticence in regard to himself that none outside of his household were aware of his resources, and his attainments were only known when displayed in self-defense.  Then they never failed to be ample for the occasion, as every opponent had reason to remember.

“Yet he was gentle as he was great.  Many thought him weak because he was simple, childlike and unworldly.  Often he suffered wrong rather than resist, and this disposition to yield was frequently his loss.  The firmness, tenacity and perseverance with which he fought his foes were the fruits of his integrity, principle and profound convictions of right and duty....  His nature was a rare combination of solid intellect and delicate sensibility.  Thoughtful, sober and quiet, he readily entered into the enjoyments of domestic and social life, indulging in sallies of humor, and readily appreciating and greatly enjoying the wit of others.  Dignified in his intercourse with men, courteous and affable with the gentler sex, he was a good husband, a judicious father, a generous and faithful friend.

“He had the misfortune to incur the hostility of men who would deprive him of his merit and the reward of his labors.  But this is the common fate of great inventors.  He lived until his rights were vindicated by every tribunal to which they could be referred, and acknowledged by all civilized nations, and he died leaving to his children a spotless and illustrious name, and to his country the honor of having given birth to the only Electro-Magnetic Recording Telegraph whose line is gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world.”