the first line between Washington and Baltimore, to be impracticable, had been to bury the wires in a trench in the ground.  I say it was found to be impracticable, but that is true only of the conditions at that early date.  The inventor was here again ahead of his time, for the underground system is now used in many cities, and may in time become universal.  However, we shall see, when the story of the building of that first historic line is told, that in this respect, and in many others, great difficulties were encountered and failure was averted only by the ingenuity, the resourcefulness, and the quick-wittedness of the inventor himself and his able assistants.  Is it too much to suppose that, had the Russian, or even the French, contract gone through, and had Morse been compelled to recruit his assistants from the people of an alien land, whose language he could neither speak nor thoroughly understand, the result would have been a dismal failure, calling down only ridicule on the head of the luckless inventor, and perhaps causing him to abandon the whole enterprise, discouraged and disheartened?

Be this as it may, the European trip was considered a failure in a practical sense, while having resulted in a personal triumph in so far as the scientific elements of the invention were concerned.  I shall, therefore, give only occasional extracts from the letters, some of them dealing with matters not in any way related to the telegraph.

He writes to Mr. Smith on February 18, 1839:—­

“I have been wholly occupied for the last week in copying out the correspondence and other documents to defend myself against the infamous attack of Dr. Jackson, notice of which my brother sent me....  I have sent a letter to Dr. Jackson calling on him to save his character by a total disclaimer of his presumptuous claim within one week from the receipt of the letter, and giving him the plea of a ‘mistake’ and ’misconception of my invention’ by which he may retreat.  If he fails to do this, I have requested my brother to publish immediately my defense, in which I give a history of the invention, the correspondence between Dr. Jackson and myself, and close with the letters of Hon. Mr. Rives, Mr. Fisher, of Philadelphia, and Captain Pell.

“I cannot conceive of such infatuation as has possessed this man.  He can scarcely be deceived.  It must be his consummate self-conceit that deceives him, if he is deceived.  But this cannot be; he knows he has no title whatever to a single hint of any kind in the matter.”

I have already alluded to the claim of Dr. Jackson, and have shown that it was proved to be utterly without foundation, and have only introduced this reference to it as an instance of the attacks which were made upon Morse, attacks which compelled him to consume much valuable time, in the midst of his other labors, in order to repel them, which he always succeeded in doing.