umber of
requests made to him to assume the presidency of all sorts of
organizations, and these requests multiplied as he advanced in years.
Most of them he felt compelled to decline, for, as he says in a letter of
March 13, 1866, declining the presidency of the Geographical and
Statistical Society: "I am at an age when I find it necessary rather to
be relieved from the cares and responsibilities already resting upon me,
than to take upon me additional ones."

In many other cases he allowed his name to be used as vice-president or
member, when he considered the object of the organization a worthy one,
and his benefactions were only limited by his means.

He did, however, accept the presidency of one association just at this
time, the American Asiatic Society, in which were interested such men as
Gorham Abbott, Dr. Forsyth, E.H. Champlin, Thomas Harrison, and Morse's
brother-in-law, William M. Goodrich. The aims of this society were rather
vast, including an International Congress to be called by the Emperor
Napoleon III, for the purpose of opening up and controlling the great
highways from the East to the West through the Isthmus of Suez and that
of Panama; also the colonization of Palestine by the Jews, and other
commercial and philanthropic schemes. I cannot find that anything of
lasting importance was accomplished by this society, so I shall make no
further mention of it, although there is much correspondence about it.

The following, from a letter to Mr. Kendall of March 19, 1866, explains
itself: "If I understand the position of our Telegraph interests, they
are now very much as you and I wished them to be in the outset, not cut
up in O'Reilly fashion into irresponsible parts, but making one grand
whole like the Post-Office system. It is becoming, doubtless, a
_monopoly_, but no more so than the Post-Office system, and its unity is
in reality a public advantage if properly and uprightly managed, and
this, of course, will depend on the character of the managers. Confidence
must be reposed somewhere, and why not in upright and responsible men who
are impelled as well by their own interest to have their matters
conducted with fairness and with liberality."

As a curious commentary on his misplaced faith in the integrity of
others, I shall quote from a letter of January 4, 1867, to E.S. Sanford,
Esq., which also shows his abhorrence of anything like crooked dealing in
financial matters:--

"I wish when you again w