o get money from Congress, and he kept
at it for five years in vain.

It was the 3d of March, 1843. At twelve o'clock that night the session
of Congress would end. Morse kept about the Senate chamber till nearly
midnight, in hopes his bill would pass. Then he gave it up in despair
and went to his boarding house. He was sure his little bill would not be
thought of in the crowd of business before Congress and was greatly
depressed in consequence.

He came down to breakfast the next morning with a very sad face, hardly
knowing how he was to pay his board and get home. He was met by a young
lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came to him with a smile.

"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she said.

"For what, my dear friend?"

"For the passage of your bill."

"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the passage of my bill?"

"Yes; do you not know of it?"

"No; it cannot be true!"

"You came home too early last night, Mr. Morse. Your bill has passed,
and I am happy to be the first to bring you the good news."

"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "For your good news I
promise you this: when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the
honor of selecting the first message to be sent over it."

Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars. It was not much, but
Morse went actively to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his pipe
in, through which the wire was to run. He got another inventor to help
him, Ezra Cornell, who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr.
Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch at a great rate, laid the
pipe, and covered it in. In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred
feet of pipe.

But Cornell did not think the underground wire would work.

"It will work," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, men
have laid short lines in England which work very well. What can be done
there can be done here."

For all that, it would not work. A year passed and only seven thousand
dollars of the money were left, and all the wires laid were of no use.

"If it won't go underground we must try and coax it to go over-ground,"
said Morse.

Poles were erected; the wire was strung on glass insulators; it now
worked to a charm. On May 11, 1844, the Whig National Convention at
Baltimore nominated Henry Clay for President, and the news was sent to
Washington in all haste by the first railroad train. But the passengers
were surprised to find that they brought stale new