manner
indicate exultation. He believed himself an instrument employed by Heaven
to achieve a great result, and, having accomplished it, he claimed simply
to be the original and only instrument by which that result had been
reached. With the same steadiness of purpose, tenacity and perseverance,
with which he had pursued the idea by which he was inspired in 1832, he
adhered to his claim to the paternity of that idea, and to the merit of
bringing it to a successful issue. Denied, he asserted it; assailed, he
defended it. Through long years of controversy, discussion and
litigation, he maintained his right. Equable alike in success and
discouragement, calm in the midst of victories, and undismayed by the
number, the violence, and the power of those who sought to deprive him of
the honor and the reward of his work, he manfully maintained his ground,
until, by the verdict of the highest courts of his country, and of
academies of science, and the practical adoption and indorsement of his
system by his own and foreign nations, those wires, which were now
speaking only forty miles from Washington to Baltimore, were stretched
over continents and under oceans making a network to encompass and unite,
in instantaneous intercourse, for business and enjoyment, all parts of
the civilized world."

It was with well-earned but modest satisfaction that he wrote to his
brother Sidney on May 31:--

"You will see by the papers how great success has attended the first
efforts of the Telegraph. That sentence of Annie Ellsworth's was divinely
indited, for it is in my thoughts day and night. 'What hath God wrought!'
It is his work, and He alone could have carried me thus far through all
my trials and enabled me to triumph over the obstacles, physical and
moral, which opposed me.

"'Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name, O Lord, be all the praise.'

"I begin to fear now the effects of public favor, lest it should kindle
that pride of heart and self-sufficiency which dwells in my own as well
as in others' breasts, and which, alas! is so ready to be inflamed by the
slightest spark of praise. I do indeed feel gratified, and it is right I
should rejoice, but I rejoice with fear, and I desire that a sense of
dependence upon and increased obligation to the Giver of every good and
perfect gift may keep me humble and circumspect.

"The conventions at Baltimore happened most opportunely for the display
of the powers of the Telegraph, especially