nate modesty. Some
persons and some papers said that he was present, but, as Mr. James D.
Reid says in his "Telegraph in America," "Mr. Morse was incapable of such
an indelicacy.... Men of refinement and modesty would justly have
marvelled had they seen him in such a place."

At about four o'clock the Governor of New York, John T. Hoffman,
delivered the opening address, saying, in the course of his speech: "In
our day a new era has dawned. Again, for the second time in the history
of the world, the power of language is increased by human agency. Thanks
to Samuel F.B. Morse men speak to one another now, though separated by
the width of the earth, with the lightning's speed and as if standing
face to face. If the inventor of the alphabet be deserving of the highest
honors, so is he whose great achievement marks this epoch in the history
of language--the inventor of the Electric Telegraph. We intend, so far as
in us lies, that the men who come after us shall be at no loss to
discover his name for want of recorded testimony."

Governor Claflin, of Massachusetts, and William Orton, president of the
Western Union Telegraph Company, then drew aside the drapery amidst the
cheers and applause of the multitude, while the Governor's Island band
played the "Star-Spangled Banner."

William Cullen Bryant, who was an early friend of the inventor, then
presented the statue to the city in an eloquent address, from which I
shall quote the following words:--

"It may be said, I know, that the civilized world is already full of
memorials which speak the merit of our friend and the grandeur and
utility of his invention. Every telegraphic station is such a memorial.
Every message sent from one of these stations to another may be counted
among the honors paid to his name. Every telegraphic wire strung from
post to post, as it hums in the wind, murmurs his eulogy. Every sheaf of
wires laid down in the deep sea, occupying the bottom of soundless
abysses to which human sight has never penetrated, and carrying the
electric pulse, charged with the burden of human thought, from continent
to continent, from the Old World to the New, is a testimonial to his
greatness.... The Latin inscription in the church of St. Paul's in
London, referring to Sir Christopher Wren, its architect,--'If you would
behold his monument, look around you,'--may be applied in a far more
comprehensive sense to our friend, since the great globe itself has
become his monume