with more benefit to the country. While this is the case I do not feel
that the country will suffer should one like myself, wearied with the
struggles and litigations of half a century, desire to be excused from
encountering the annoyances and misapprehensions inseparable from
political life."

Thanks to the successful efforts of his good friend, Mr. Kendall, he was
now financially independent, so much so that he felt justified in
purchasing, in the fall of the year 1859, the property at 5 West
Twenty-second Street, New York, where the winters of the remaining years
of his life were passed, except when he was abroad. This house has now
been replaced by a commercial structure, but a bronze tablet marks the
spot where once stood the old-fashioned brown stone mansion.

While his mind was comparatively at rest regarding money matters, he was
not yet free from vexatious litigation, and his opinion of lawyers is
tersely expressed in a letter to Mr. Kendall of December 27, 1859: "I
have not lost my respect for law but I have for its administrators; not
so much for any premeditated dishonesty as for their stupidity and want
of just insight into a case."

It was not long before he had a practical proof of the truth of this
aphorism, for his "thorn in the flesh" never ceased from rankling, and
now gave a new instance of the depths to which an unscrupulous man could
descend. On June 9, 1860, Morse writes to his legal adviser, Mr. George
Ticknor Curtis, of Boston: "You may remember that Smith, just before I
sailed for Europe in 1858, intimated that he should demand of me a
portion of the Honorary Gratuity voted to me by the congress of ten
powers at Paris. I procured your opinion, as you know, and I had hoped
that he would not insist on so preposterous a claim. I am, however,
disappointed; he has recently renewed it. I have had some correspondence
with him on the subject utterly denying any claim on his part. He
proposes a reference, but I have not yet encouraged him to think I would
assent. I wish your advice before I answer him."

It is difficult to conceive of a meaner case of extortion than this. As
Morse says in a letter to Mr. Kendall, of August 3, 1860, after he had
consented to a reference of the matter to three persons: "I have no
apprehensions of the result except that I may be entrapped by some legal
technicalities. Look at the case in an equitable point of view and, it
appears to me, no intelligent, just men could g