ent.

A recent writer in the "Scientific American" gave utterance to the
following sentiment, which, it seems to me, most aptly describes this
difference: "We need physical discoveries and revere those who seek truth
for its own sake. But mankind with keen instinct saves its warmest
acclaim for those who also make discoveries of some avail in adding to
the length of life, its joys, its possibilities, its conveniences."

We must also remember that, while the baby telegraph had, in 1837, been
recognized as a promising infant by a very few scientists and personal
friends of the inventor, it was still regarded with suspicion, if not
with scorn, by the general public and even by many men of scholarly
attainments, and a long and heart-breaking struggle for existence was
ahead of it before it should reach maturity and develop into the lusty
giant of the present day. Here again Morse proved that he was the one man
of his generation most eminently fitted to fight for the child of his
brain, to endure and to persevere until the victor's crown was grasped.

It is always idle to speculate on what might have happened if certain
events had not taken place; if certain men had not met certain other men.
A telegraph would undoubtedly have been invented if Morse had never been
born; or he might have perfected his invention without the aid and advice
of others, or with the assistance of different men from those who
appeared at the psychological moment. But we are dealing with facts and
not with suppositions, and the facts are that through Professor Gale he
was made acquainted with the discoveries of Joseph Henry, which had been
published to the world several years before, and could have been used by
others if they had had the wit or genius to grasp their significance and
hit upon the right means to make them of practical utility.

Morse was ever ready cheerfully to acknowledge the assistance which had
been given to him by others, but, at the same time, he always took the
firm stand that this did not give them a claim to an equal share with
himself in the honor of the invention. In a long letter to Professor
Charles T. Jackson, written on September 18, 1837, he vigorously but
courteously repudiates the claim of the latter to have been a co-inventor
on board the Sully, and he proves his point, for Jackson not only knew
nothing of the plan adopted by Morse, and carried by him to a successful
issue, but had never suggested anything of a pra