e
telegraph in India.--Mr. Cooke.--Charles H. Leslie.--Paris.--Hamburg.--
Copenhagen.--Presentation to king.--Thorwaldsen Museum.--Oersted's
daughter.--St. Petersburg.--Presentation to Czar at Peterhoff.

I have said in the preceding chapter that order was gradually emerging
from chaos in telegraphic matters, but the progress towards that goal was
indeed gradual, and a perusal of the voluminous correspondence between
Morse and Kendall, and others connected with the different lines, leaves
the reader in a state of confused bewilderment and wonder that all the
conflicting interests, and plots and counterplots, could ever have been
brought into even seeming harmony. Too much praise cannot be given to Mr.
Kendall for the patience and skill with which he disentangled this
apparently hopeless snarl, while at the same time battling against
physical ills which would have caused most men to give up in despair.
That Morse fully appreciated the sterling qualities of this faithful
friend is evidenced by the letter to Dr. Gale in the preceding chapter,
and by many others. He always refused to consider for a moment the
substitution of a younger man on the plea of Mr. Kendall's failing
health, and his carelessness in the keeping of their personal accounts.
It is true that, because of this laxity on Mr. Kendall's part, Morse was
for a long time deprived of the full income to which he was entitled, but
he never held this up against his friend, always making excuses for him.

Affairs seem to have been going from bad to worse in the matter of
dividends, for, while in 1850 he had said that only 509 miles out of 1150
were paying him personally anything, he says in a letter to Mr. Kendall
of January 8, 1855:--

"I perceive the Magnetic Telegraph Company meet in Washington on Thursday
the 11th. Please inform me by telegraph the amount of dividend they
declare and the time payable. This is the only source on which I can
calculate for the means of subsistence from day to day with any degree of
certainty.

"It is a singular reflection that occurs frequently to my mind that out
of 40,000 miles of telegraph, all of which should pay me something, only
225 miles is all that I can depend upon with certainty; and the case is a
little aggravated when I think that throughout all Europe, which is now
meshed with telegraph wires from the southern point of Corsica to St.
Petersburg, on which my telegraph is universally used, not a mile
contributes to m