where the magnetic apparatus was arranged.

"It is not necessary for me to describe particulars which have now become
familiar to every one. The fact which I recall with the liveliest
interest, and which I mentioned in conversation at Mr. Bancroft's as one
of the choicest recollections of my life, was that of the first
transmission and recording of a telegraphic dispatch.

"I suppose, of course, that you had already made these experiments before
the company arrived whom you had invited. But I claim to have witnessed
_the first transmission and recording of words_ by lightning ever made
public.... The arrangement which you exhibited on the above mentioned
occasion, as well as the mode of receiving the dispatches, were
substantially the same as those you now employ. I feel certain that you
had then already grasped the whole invention, however you may have since
perfected the details."

Others bore testimony in similar words, so that we may regard it as
proved that, both in 1835 and 1836, demonstrations were made which,
uncouth though they were, compared to present-day perfection, proved that
the electric telegraph was about to emerge from the realms of fruitless
experiment. Among these witnesses were Daniel Huntington, Hon. Hamilton
Fish, and Commodore Shubrick; and several of these gentlemen asserted
that, at that early period, Morse confidently predicted that Europe and
America would eventually be united by an electric wire.

The letters written by Morse during these critical years have become
hopelessly dispersed, and but few have come into my possession. His
brothers were both in New York, so that there was no necessity of writing
to them, and the letters written to others cannot, at this late day, be
traced. As he also, unfortunately, did not keep a journal, I must depend
on the testimony of others, and on his own recollections in later years
for a chronicle of his struggles. The pencil copy of a letter written to
a friend in Albany, on August 27, 1837, has, however, survived, and the
following sentences will, I think, be found interesting:--

"Thanks to you, my dear C----, for the concern you express in regard to
my health. It has been perfectly good and is now, with the exception of a
little anxiety in relation to the telegraph and to my great pictorial
undertaking, which wears the furrows of my face a little deeper. My
Telegraph, in all its essential points, is tested to my own satisfaction
and that of the sci