w York artist who studied painting in Europe,
and in the year 1832 took passage home in the ship "Sully." One day a
talk went on in the cabin of the ship. Dr. Jackson, one of the
passengers, told how some persons in Paris had sent an electric current
through several miles of wire in less than a second of time.

[Illustration: THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND THEIR FAMOUS AEROPLANE.]

"If that is the case," said Morse, "why could not words and sentences be
sent in the same way?"

"That's a good idea. It would be a great thing if we could send news as
fast as lightning," said one of the passengers.

"Why can't we?" said Morse; "I think we can do it."

Very likely the rest of the passengers soon forgot all about that
conversation, but Morse did not. During the remainder of the voyage he
was very quiet and kept much to himself. He was thinking over what he
had heard. Before the ship had reached New York he had worked out a plan
of telegraphing. He proposed to carry the wire in tubes underground, and
to use an alphabet of dots and dashes, the same that is used by
telegraphers to-day.

When he went on shore Morse said to the captain: "Captain, if you should
hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world,
remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship 'Sully.'"

"If I can make it go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go round
the world," he said to a passenger.

But it is easier to think out a thing than to put it in practice. Poor
Morse was more than ten years in working out his plans and getting
people to help him in them. He got out of money and was near starving,
but he kept at it. After three years he managed to send a message
through seventeen hundred feet of wire. He could read it, but his
friends could not, and no one was ready to put money in such a scheme.
They looked at it as a toy to amuse children. Then he went to Europe and
tried to get money there, but he found the people there as hard to
convince as those in America.

"No one is in such a hurry for news as all that," they said. "People
would rather get their news in the good old way. Your wires work, Mr.
Morse, but it would take a great deal of money to lay miles of them
underground, and we are not going to take such chances as that with our
money."

Mr. Morse next tried to get Congress to grant him a sum of money. He
wanted to build a wire from Baltimore to Washington and show how it
would work. But it is never easy t