“I have come to congratulate you, Mr. Morse,” she said, cheerily.

“For what, my dear friend?”

“For the passage of your bill.”

“What!” he gazed at her amazement.  Could she be attempting a foolish and cruel jest?  “The passage of my bill!” he faltered.

“Yes.  Do you not know of it?”

“No.”

“Then you came home too early last night.  And I am happy in being the first to bring you the good news.  Congress has granted your claim.”

It was true:  he had been remembered in the will of the expiring Congress.  In the last hour of the Senate, amid the roar of the deluge of public business, his small demand had floated into sight, and thirty thousand dollars had been voted him for the construction of an experimental telegraph line.

“You have given me new life, Miss Ellsworth,” he said.  “As a reward for your good tidings I promise you that when my telegraph line is completed, you shall have the honor of choosing the first message to be sent over it.”

The inventor was highly elated, and not without reason.  Since the morning of the conversation on the ship Sully, eleven and a half years had passed.  They had been years of such struggle against poverty and discouragement as only a man who is the slave of an idea has the hardihood to endure.  The annals of invention contain many such instances; more, perhaps, than can be found in any other channel of human effort.

To complete our story we have to bring another inventor upon the stage.  This was Ezra Cornell, memorable to-day as the founder of Cornell University, a man at that time unknown, but filled with inventive ideas, and ready to undertake any task that might offer itself, from digging a well to boring a mountain tunnel.  One day Mr. Cornell, who was at that time occupying the humble position of traveling agent for a patent plough, called at the office of an agricultural newspaper in Portland, Maine.  He found the editor on his knees, a piece of chalk in his hand, and parts of a plough by his side, making drawings on the floor, and trying to explain something to a plough-maker beside him.  The editor looked up at his visitor, and an expression of relief replaced the perplexity on his face.

“Cornell,” he cried, “you’re the very man I want to see.  I want a scraper made, and I can’t make Robinson here see into my idea.  You can understand it, and make it for me, too.”

“What is your scraper to do?” asked Cornell.

Mr. Smith, the editor, rose from his knees and explained.  A line of telegraph was to be built from Baltimore to Washington.  Congress had granted the money.  He had taken the contract from Professor Morse to lay the tube in which the wire was to be placed.  He had made a bad bargain, he feared.  The job was going to cost more than he had calculated, on.  He was trying to invent something that would dig the ditch, and fill in the dirt again after the pipe was laid.  Cornell listened to him, questioned him, found out the size of the pipe and the depth of the ditch, then sat down and passed some minutes in hard thinking.  Finally he said,—­