What followed may be briefly told.  So great was the indignation against Burr that he was forced to abandon his project.  His adherents were left in destitution.  Some of them were a thousand miles and more from their homes, and were forced to make their way back as they best could.  Burr and Blennerhasset were both arrested for treason.  The latter escaped.  There was no criminating evidence against him.  As for Burr, he had been far too shrewd to leave himself open to the hand of the law.  His trial resulted in an acquittal.  Though no doubt was felt of his guilt, no evidence could be found to establish it.  He was perforce set free.

If he had done nothing more, he had, by his detestable arts, broken up one of the happiest homes in America, and ruined his guileless victim.

Blennerhasset bought a cotton plantation at Natchez.  His wife, who had the energy he lacked, managed it.  They dwelt there for ten years, favorites with the neighboring planters.  Then came war with England, and the plantation ceased to afford them a living.  The ruined man returned to his native land, utterly worn out and discouraged, and died there in poverty in 1831.

Mrs. Blennerhasset became a charge on the charity of her friends.  After several years she returned to the United States, where she sought to obtain remuneration from Congress for her destroyed property.  She would probably have succeeded but for her sudden death.  She was buried at the expense of a society of Irish ladies in the city of New York.  And thus ended the career of two of the victims of Aaron Burr.  They had listened to the siren voice of the tempter, and ruin and despair were their rewards.

HOW THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH WAS INVENTED.

The year 1832 is only sixty years ago in time, yet since then there has been a striking development of conveniences, rapidity of travel, and arrangements for the diffusion of intelligence.  People then still travelled in great part by aid of horses, the railroad having just begun its marvellous career.  News, which now fly over continents and under oceans at lightning speed, then jogged on at stage-coach rates of progress, creeping where they now fly.  On the ocean, steam was beginning to battle with wind and wave, but the ocean racer was yet a far-off dream, and mariners still put their trust in sails much more than in the new-born contrivances which were preparing to revolutionize travel.  But the wand of the enchanter had been waved; steam had come, and with it the new era of progress had dawned.  And another great agent in the development of civilization was about to come.  Electricity, which during all previous time had laughed at bonds, was soon to become man’s slave, and to be made his purveyor of news.  It is the story of this chaining of the lightning, and forcing it to become the swift conveyer of man’s sayings and doings, that we have here to tell.