he summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention
became attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for
subsistence. Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order
to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means,
I had for months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in
small quantities from some grocery, and preparing it myself. To conceal
from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit
of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of
life for many years."

Nearly twenty years later, in 1853, Morse referred to this trying period
in his career at a meeting of the Association of the Alumni of the
University:--

"Yesternight, on once more entering your chapel, I saw the same marble
staircase and marble floors I once so often trod, and so often with a
heart and head overburdened with almost crushing anxieties. Separated
from the chapel by but a thin partition was that room I occupied, now
your Philomathean Hall, whose walls--had thoughts and mental struggles,
with the alternations of joys and sorrows, the power of being
daguerreotyped upon them--would show a thickly studded gallery of
evidence that there the Briarean infant was born who has stretched forth
his arms with the intent to encircle the world. Yes, that room of the
University was the birthplace of the Recording Telegraph. Attempts,
indeed, have been made to assign to it other parentage, and to its
birthplace other localities. Personally I have very little anxiety on
this point, except that the truth should not suffer; for I have a
consciousness, which neither sophistry nor ignorance can shake, that that
room is the place of its birth, and a confidence, too, that its cradle is
in hands that will sustain its rightful claim."

The old building of the University of the City of New York on Washington
Square has been torn down to be replaced by a mercantile structure; the
University has moved to more spacious quarters in the upper part of the
great city; but one of its notable buildings is the Hall of Fame, and
among the first names to be immortalized in bronze in the stately
colonnade was that of Samuel F.B. Morse.

CHAPTER XXIII

1835--1837

First exhibitions of the Telegraph.--Testimony of Robert G. Rankin and
Rev. Henry B. Tappan.--Cooke and Wheatstone.--Joseph Henry, Leonard D.
Gale, and Alfred Vail.--Professor Gale's testimony.--Professo