ngress,
convened at Paris for the purpose, as a personal, honorary gratuity as
the Inventor of the Telegraph.... Notwithstanding, however, that the
Congress had put the sum voted me on the ground of a personal, honorary
gratuity, I made up my mind in the very outset that I would divide to
your good husband just that proportion of what I might receive (after due
allowance and deduction of my heavy expenses in carrying through the
transaction) as would have been his if the money so voted by the Congress
had been the purchase money of patent rights. This design I early
intimated to Mr. Vail, and I am happy in having already fulfilled in part
my promise to him, when I had received the gratuity only in part. It was
only the last spring that the whole sum, promised in four annual
instalments (after the various deductions in Europe) has been remitted to
me.... I wrote to Mr. Cobb [one of Alfred Vail's executors] some months
ago, while he was in Washington, requesting an early interview to pay
over the balance for you, but have never received an answer.... Could you
not come to town this week, either with or without Mr. Cobb, as is most
agreeable to you, prepared to settle this matter in full? If so, please
drop me a line stating the day and hour you will come, and I will make it
a point to be at home at the time."

In this connection I shall quote from a letter to Mr. George Vail,
written much earlier in the year, on May 19:--

"It will give me much pleasure to aid you in your project of disposing of
the _'original wire'_ of the Telegraph, and if my certificate to its
genuineness will be of service, you shall cheerfully have it. I am not at
this moment aware that there is any quantity of this wire anywhere else,
except it may be in the helices of the big magnets which I have at
Poughkeepsie. These shall not interfere with your design.

"I make only one modification of your proposal, and that is, if any
profits are realized, please substitute for my name the name of your
brother Alfred's amiable widow."

Although the malign animosity of F.O.J. Smith followed him to his grave,
and even afterwards, he was, in this year of 1862, relieved from one
source of annoyance from him, as we learn from a letter of May 19 to Mr.
Kendall: "I have had a settlement with Smith in full on the award of the
Referees in regard to the 'Honorary Gratuity,' and with less difficulty
than I expected."

Morse had now passed the Scriptural age allotte