ar-off Australia came the news
of his triumph. A letter was sent to him, written from Melbourne on
December 3, 1853, by a Mr. Samuel McGowan to a friend in New York, which
contains the following gratifying intelligence:--

"Since the date of my last to you matters with me have undergone a
material change. I have come off conqueror in my hard fought battle. The
contract has been awarded to me in the faces of the representatives of
Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke, Brett and other telegraphic luminaries,
much to their chagrin, as I afterwards ascertained; several of them, it
appears, having been leagued together in order, as they stated, to thwart
a speculating Yankee. However, matters were not so ordained, and I am as
well satisfied. I hope they will all live to be the same."

In spite of his financial difficulties, caused by bad management of some
of the lines in which he was interested, he could not resist the
temptation to give liberally where his heart inclined him, and in a
letter of January 9, 1854, to President Woolsey of Yale, he says:--

"Enclosed, therefore, you have my check for one thousand dollars, which
please hand to the Treasurer of the College as my subscription towards
the fund which is being raised for the benefit of my dearly loved _Alma
Mater_.

"I wish I could make it a larger sum, and, without promising what I may
do at some future time, yet I will say that the prosperity of Yale
College is so near my heart that, should my affairs (now embarrassed by
litigations in self-defence yet undecided) assume a more prosperous
aspect, I have it in mind to add something more to the sum now sent."

The year 1854 was memorable in the history of the telegraph because of
two important events--the decision of the Supreme Court in Morse's favor,
already referred to, and the extension of his patent for another period
of seven years. The first established for all time his legal right to be
called the "Inventor of the Telegraph," and the second enabled him to
reap some adequate reward for his years of privation, of struggle, and of
heroic faith. It was for a long time doubtful whether his application for
an extension of his patent would be granted, and much of his time in the
early part of 1854 was consumed in putting in proper form all the data
necessary to substantiate his claim, and in visiting Washington to urge
the justice of an extension. From that city he wrote often to his wife in
Poughkeepsie, and I shall quo