ed."

And now at last the supreme moment had arrived. The line from Washington
to Baltimore was completed, and on the 24th day of May, 1844, the company
invited by the inventor assembled in the chamber of the United States
Supreme Court to witness his triumph. True to his promise to Miss Annie
Ellsworth, he had asked her to indite the first public message which
should be flashed over the completed line, and she, in consultation with
her good mother, chose the now historic words from the 23d verse of the
23d chapter of Numbers--"What hath God wrought!" The whole verse reads:
"Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
divination, against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of
Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" To Morse, with his strong
religious bent and his belief that he was but a chosen vessel, every word
in this verse seemed singularly appropriate. Calmly he seated himself at
the instrument and ticked off the inspired words in the dots and dashes
of the Morse alphabet. Alfred Vail, at the other end of the line in
Baltimore, received the message without an error, and immediately flashed
it back again, and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph was no longer the wild
dream of a visionary, but an accomplished fact.

Mr. Prime's comments, after describing this historic occasion, are so
excellent that I shall give them in full:--

"Again the triumph of the inventor was sublime. His confidence had been
so unshaken that the surprise of his friends in the result was not shared
by him. He knew what the instrument would do, and the fact accomplished
was but the confirmation to others of what to him was a certainty on the
packet-ship Sully in 1832. But the result was not the less gratifying and
sufficient. Had his labors ceased at that moment, he would have
cheerfully exclaimed in the words of Simeon: 'Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.'

[Illustration: FIRST FORM OF KEY]

[Illustration: IMPROVED FORM OF KEY]

[Illustration: EARLY RELAY
The two keys and the relay are in the National Museum, Washington]

[Illustration: FIRST WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE INSTRUMENT
The Washington-Baltimore instrument is owned by Cornell University]

"The congratulations of his friends followed. He received them with
modesty, in perfect harmony with the simplicity of his character. Neither
then nor at any subsequent period of his life did his language or