es
to accompany Allston to England, but submits to parents' desires.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the
27th day of April, A.D. 1791. He came of good Puritan stock, his father,
Jedediah Morse, being a militant clergyman of the Congregational Church,
a fighter for orthodoxy at a time when Unitarianism was beginning to
undermine the foundations of the old, austere, childlike faith.

These battles of the churches seem far away to us of the twentieth
century, but they were very real to the warriors of those days, and,
while many of the tenets of their faith may seem narrow to us, they were
gospel to the godly of that tune, and reverence, obedience, filial piety,
and courtesy were the rule and not the exception that they are to-day.

Jedediah Morse was a man of note in his day, known and respected at home
and abroad; the friend of General Washington and other founders of the
Republic; the author of the first American Geography and Gazetteer. His
wife, Elizabeth Ann Breese, granddaughter of Samuel Finley, president of
Princeton College, was a woman of great strength and yet sweetness of
character; adored by her family and friends, a veritable mother in
Israel.

Into this serene home atmosphere came young Finley Morse, the eldest of
eleven children, only three of whom survived their infancy. The other two
were Sidney Edwards and Richard Carey, both eminent men in their day.

Dr. Belknap, of Boston, in a letter to a friend in New York says:--

"Congratulate the Monmouth Judge [Mr. Breese] on the birth of a
grandson.... As to the child, I saw him asleep, so can say nothing of his
eye or his genius peeing through it. He may have the sagacity of a Jewish
rabbi, or the profundity of a Calvin, or the sublimity of a Homer for
aught I know. But time will show forth all things."

This sounds almost prophetic in the light of future days.

[Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH MORSE WAS BORN, IN CHARLESTOWN, MASS.]

The following letter from the Reverend Mr. Wells is quaint and
characteristic of the times:--

MY DEAR LITTLE BOY,--As a small testimony of my respect and obligation to
your excellent Parents and of my love to you, I send you with this six
(6) English Guineas. They are pretty playthings enough, and in the
Country I came from many people are fond of them. Your Papa will let you
look at them and shew them to Edward, and then he will take care of them,
and, by the time you grow up to be