The month of January, 1838, was a busy one at Morristown, for Morse and Vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be given in Washington at as early a date as possible.  Morse refers feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a friend, dated January 22, 1838:—­

“I have just returned from nearly six weeks’ absence at Morristown, New Jersey, where I have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of my Telegraph for Washington.

“Be thankful, C——­, that you are not an inventor.  Invention may seem an easy way to fame, or, what is the same thing to many, notoriety, different as are in reality the two objects.  But it is far otherwise.  I, indeed, desire the first, for true fame implies well-deserving, but I have no wish for the latter, which yet seems inseparable from it.

“The condition of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable.  I know of but one condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries.  In the outset, if he has really made a discovery, which very word implies that it was before unknown to the world, he encounters the incredulity, the opposition, and even the sneers of many, who look upon him with a kind of pity, as a little beside himself if not quite mad.  And, while maturing his invention, he has the comfort of reflection, in all the various discouragements he meets with from petty failures, that, should he by any means fail in the grand result, he subjects himself rather to the ridicule than the sympathy of his acquaintances, who will not be slow in attributing his failure to a want of that common sense in which, by implication, they so much abound, and which preserves them from the consequences of any such delusions.

“But you will, perhaps, think that there is an offset in the honors and emoluments that await the successful inventor, one who has really demonstrated that he has made an important discovery.  This is not so.  Trials of another kind are ready for him after the appropriate difficulties of his task are over.  Many stand ready to snatch the prize, or at least to claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention seems certain, and honor and profit alone remain to be obtained.

“This long prelude, C——­, brings me at the same time to the point of my argument and to my excuse for my long silence.  My argument goes to prove that, unless there is a benevolent consideration in our discoveries, one which enables us to rejoice that others are benefited even though we should suffer loss, our happiness from any honor awarded to a successful invention is exposed to constant danger from the designs of the unprincipled.  My excuse is that, ever since the receipt of your most welcome letter, I have been engaged in preparing to repel a threatened invasion