obtain the
help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an
appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph. Morse had come
to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and
they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or
any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury. The Bill passed
the House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, some of the
representatives fearing that their support of the measure would alienate
their constituents. Its fate in the Senate was even more dubious; and
when it came up for consideration late one night before the adjournment,
a senator, the Hon. Fernando Wood, went to Morse, who watched in the
gallery, and said,'There is no use in your staying here. The Senate is
not in sympathy with your project. I advise you to give it up, return
home, and think no more about it.'

Morse retired to his rooms, and after paying his bill for board,
including his breakfast the next morning, he found himself with only
thirty-seven cents and a half in the world. Kneeling by his bed-side
he opened his heart to God, leaving the issue in His hands, and then,
comforted in spirit, fell asleep. While eating his breakfast next
morning, Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of his friend the Hon.
Henry L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of Patents, came up with a beaming
countenance, and holding out her hand, said--

'Professor, I have come to congratulate you.'

'Congratulate me!' replied Morse; 'on what?'

'Why,' she exclaimed,' on the passage of your Bill by the Senate!'

It had been voted without debate at the very close of the session. Years
afterwards Morse declared that this was the turning-point in the history
of the telegraph. 'My personal funds,' he wrote,' were reduced to the
fraction of a dollar; and had the passage of the Bill failed from any
cause, there would have been little prospect of another attempt on my
part to introduce to the world my new invention.'

Grateful to Miss Ellsworth for bringing the good news, he declared that
when the Washington to Baltimore line was complete hers should be the
first despatch.

The Government now paid him a salary of 2,500 dollars a month to
superintend the laying of the underground line which he had decided
upon. Professors Gale and Fisher became his assistants. Vail was put in
charge, and Mr. Ezra Cornell, who founded the Cornell University on the
site of the cotton mill where he had