h they had objected.

That their neighbours called them "set in their ways" goes, of course,
without saying, but the women of the Fairbanks family have ever been
rigidly conscientious, and the men a bit obstinate. For, much as one
would like to think the contrary true, one seems forced to believe that
it was obstinacy rather than innocency which made Jason Fairbanks
protest till the hour of his death that he was being unjustly punished.

INVENTOR MORSE'S UNFULFILLED AMBITION

The first house erected in Charlestown after the destruction of the
village by fire in 1775 (the coup d'etat which immediately followed the
battle of Bunker Hill, it will be remembered), is that which is here
given as the birthplace of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of
the electric telegraph. The house is still standing at 203 Main Street,
and in the front chamber of the second story, on the right of the front
door of the entrance, visitors still pause to render tribute to the
memory of the babe that there drew his first breath on April 27,
1791.

[Illustration: EDES HOUSE, BIRTHPLACE OF PROFESSOR MORSE, CHARLESTOWN,
MASS.]

It was, however, quite by accident that the house became doubly famous,
for it was during the building of the parsonage, Pastor Morse's proper
home, that his little son came to gladden his life. Reverend Jedediah
Morse became minister of the First Parish Church on April 30, 1789, the
very date of Washington's inauguration in New York as President of the
United States, and two weeks later married a daughter of Judge Samuel
Breese, of New York. Shortly afterward it was determined to build a
parsonage, and during the construction of this dwelling Doctor Morse
accepted the hospitality of Mr. Thomas Edes, who then owned the "oldest"
house. And work on the parsonage being delayed beyond expectation, Mrs.
Morse's little son was born in the Edes house.

Apropos of the brief residence of Doctor Morse in this house comes a
quaint letter from Reverend Jeremy Belknap, the staid old doctor of
divinity, and the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which
shows that girls over a hundred years ago were quite as much interested
in young unmarried ministers as nice girls ought ever to be. Two or
three months before the settlement of Mr. Morse in Charlestown, Doctor
Belknap wrote to his friend, Ebenezer Hazard, of New York, who was a
relative of Judge Breese:

"You said in one of your late letters that probabl