t, and he was willing to accept a very modest remuneration. As I
have said before, he and the other proprietors joined in offering the
telegraph to the Government for the paltry sum of $100,000. But the
Administration of that day seems to have been stricken with unaccountable
blindness, for the Postmaster-General, that same wise and sapient Cave
Johnson who had sought to kill the telegraph bill by ridicule in the
House, and in despite of his acknowledgment to Morse, reported: "That the
operation of the Telegraph between Washington and Baltimore had not
satisfied him that, under any rate of postage that could be adopted, its
revenues could be made equal to its expenditures." Congress was equally
lax, and so the Government lost its great opportunity, for when, in after
years, the question of government ownership again came up, it was found
that either to purchase outright or to parallel existing lines would cost
many more millions than it would have taken thousands in 1844.

The failure of the Government to appreciate the value of what was offered
to them was always a source of deep regret to Morse. For, while he
himself gained much more by the operation of private companies, the evils
which he had foretold were more than realized.

But to return to the days of '44, it would seem that in the spring of
that year he met with a painful accident. Its exact nature is not
specified, but it must have been severe, and yet we learn from the
following letter to his brother Sidney, dated June 23, that he saw in it
only another blessing:--

"I am still in bed, and from appearances I am likely to be held here for
many days, perhaps weeks. The wound on the leg was worse than I at first
supposed. It seems slow in healing and has been much inflamed, although
now yielding to remedies. My hope was to have spent some weeks in New
York, but it will now depend on the time of the healing of my leg.

"The ways of God are mysterious, and I find prayer answered in a way not
at all anticipated. This accident, as we are apt to call it, I can
plainly see is calculated to effect many salutary objects. I needed rest
of body and mind after my intense anxieties and exertions, and I might
have neglected it, and so, perhaps, brought on premature disease of both;
but I am involuntarily laid up so that I must keep quiet, and, although
the fall that caused my wound was painful at first, yet I have no severe
pain with it now. But the principal effect is, do