more
domestic. On June 13, he writes to his brother: "Charles left me for
Utica last evening, and Finley and I go this evening to be present at his
marriage on Thursday the 15th."

It was at his son's wedding that he was again strongly attracted to his
young second cousin (or, to be more exact, his first cousin once
removed), the first cousin of his son's bride, and the result is
announced to his brother in a letter of August 7: "Before your return I
shall be again married. I leave to-morrow for Utica where cousin (second
cousin) Sarah Elizabeth Griswold now is. On Thursday morning the 10th we
shall (God willing) be married, and I shall immediately proceed to
Louisville and Frankfort in Kentucky to be present at my first suit
against O'Reilly, the pirate of my invention. It comes off on the 23d
inst. So far as the justice of the case is concerned I am confident of
final success, but there are so many crooks in the law that I ought to be
prepared for disappointment."

Continuing, he tells his brother that he has been secretly in love with
his future wife for some years: "But, reflecting on it, I found I was in
no situation to indulge in any plans of marrying. She had nothing, I had
nothing, and the more I loved her the more I was determined to stifle my
feelings without hinting to her anything of the matter, or letting her
know that I was at all interested in her."

But now, with increasing wealth, the conditions were changed, and so they
were married, and in their case it can with perfect truth be said, "They
lived happy ever after," and failed by but a year of being able to
celebrate their silver wedding. Soon a young family grew up around him,
to whom he was always a patient and loving father. We his children
undoubtedly gave him many an anxious moment, as children have a habit of
doing, but through all his trials, domestic as well as extraneous, he was
calm, wise, and judicious.

[Illustration: SARAH ELIZABETH GRISWOLD Second wife of S.F.B. Morse]

But now the first of the great lawsuits, which were to confirm Morse's
patent rights or to throw his invention open to the world, was begun,
and, with his young bride, he hastened to Frankfort to be present at the
trial. To follow these suits through all their legal intricacies would
make dry reading and consume reams of paper. Mr. Prime in a footnote
remarks: "Mr. Henry O'Reilly has deposited in the Library of the New York
Historical Society more than one hundred vol