or to do anything. Without a country!
Without a country!"

He went even further, in one respect, in a letter to Mr. Walker, of
Utica, of October 27, but his ordinarily keen prophetic vision was at
fault: "Have you made up your mind to be under a future monarch, English
or French, or some scion of a European stock of kings? I shall not live
to see it, I hope, but you may and your children will. I leave you this
prophecy in black and white."

In spite of his occasional fits of pessimism he still strove with all his
might, by letters and published pamphlets, to rescue his beloved country
from what he believed were the machinations of foreign enemies. At the
same time he did not neglect his more immediate concerns, and his
letter-books are filled with loving admonitions to his children,
instructions to his farmer, answers to inventors seeking his advice, or
to those asking for money for various causes, etc.

He and his two brothers had united in causing a monument to be erected to
the memory of their father and mother in the cemetery at New Haven, and
he insisted on bearing the lion's share of the expense, as we learn from
a letter written to his nephew, Sidney E. Morse, Jr., on October 10,
1862:--

"Above you have my check on Broadway Bank, New York, for five hundred
dollars towards Mr. Ritter's bill.

"Tell your dear father and Uncle Sidney that this is the portion of the
bill for the monument which I choose to assume. Tell them I have still a
good memory of past years, when I was poor and received from them the
kind attentions of affectionate brothers. I am now, through the loving
kindness and bounty of our Heavenly Father, in such circumstances that I
can afford this small testimonial to their former fraternal kindness, and
I know no better occasion to manifest the long pent-up feelings of my
heart towards them than by lightening, under the embarrassments of the
times, the pecuniary burden of our united testimonial to the best of
fathers and mothers."

This monument, a tall column surmounted by a terrestrial globe,
symbolical of the fact that the elder Morse was the first American
geographer, is still to be seen in the New Haven cemetery.

Another instance of the inventor's desire to show his gratitude towards
those who had befriended him in his days of poverty and struggle is shown
in a letter of November 17, 1862, to the widow of Alfred Vail:--

"You are aware that a sum of money was voted me by a special Co