used in this exhibition.

The month of January, 1838, was a busy one at Morristown, for Morse and
Vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion
of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be
given in Washington at as early a date as possible. Morse refers
feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a
friend, dated January 22, 1838:--

"I have just returned from nearly six weeks' absence at Morristown, New
Jersey, where I have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of
my Telegraph for Washington.

"Be thankful, C----, that you are not an inventor. Invention may seem an
easy way to _fame_, or, what is the same thing to many, _notoriety_,
different as are in reality the two objects. But it is far otherwise. I,
indeed, desire the first, for true fame implies well-deserving, but I
have no wish for the latter, which yet seems inseparable from it.

"The condition of an inventor is, indeed, not enviable. I know of but one
condition that renders it in any degree tolerable, and that is the
reflection that his fellow-men may be benefited by his discoveries. In
the outset, if he has really made a _discovery_, which very word implies
that it was before unknown to the world, he encounters the incredulity,
the opposition, and even the sneers of many, who look upon him with a
kind of pity, as a little beside himself if not quite mad. And, while
maturing his invention, he has the comfort of reflection, in all the
various discouragements he meets with from petty failures, that, should
he by any means fail in the grand result, he subjects himself rather to
the ridicule than the sympathy of his acquaintances, who will not be slow
in attributing his failure to a want of that common sense in which, by
implication, they so much abound, and which preserves them from the
consequences of any such delusions.

"But you will, perhaps, think that there is an offset in the honors and
emoluments that await the successful inventor, one who has really
demonstrated that he has made an important discovery. This is not so.
Trials of another kind are ready for him after the appropriate
difficulties of his task are over. Many stand ready to snatch the prize,
or at least to claim a share, so soon as the success of an invention
seems certain, and honor and profit alone remain to be obtained.

"This long prelude, C----, brings me at the same time to the point of my
argum