"I should have written you sooner but I have been employed in settling
myself. I thought it best not to be precipitate in fixing on a place to
board and lodge, but first to sound the public as to my success. Every
one thinks I shall meet with encouragement, and, on the strength of this,
I have taken lodgings and a room at Mrs. Hinge's in Jaffrey Street; a
very excellent and central situation.... I shall commence on Monday
morning with Governor Langdon's portrait. He is very kind and attentive
to me, as, indeed, are all here, and will do everything to aid me. I wish
not to raise high expectations, but I think I shall succeed tolerably
well."

About this time Finley Morse and his brother Edwards had jointly devised
and patented a new "flexible piston-pump," from which they hoped great
things. Edwards, always more or less of a wag, proposed to call it
"Morse's Patent Metallic Double-headed Ocean-Drinker and Deluge-Spouter
Valve Pump-Boxes."

It was to be used in connection with fire-engines, and seems really to
have been an excellent invention, for President Jeremiah Day, of Yale
College, gave the young inventors his written endorsement, and Eli
Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, thus recommends it: "Having
examined the model of a fire-engine invented by Mr. Morse, with pistons
of a new construction, I am of opinion that an engine may be made on that
principle (being more simple and much less expensive), which would have a
preference to those in common use."

In the letters of the year 1817 and of several following years, even in
the letters of the young man to his _fiancee,_ many long references are
made to this pump and to the varying success in introducing it into
general use. I shall not, however, refer to it again, and only mention it
to show the bent of Morse's mind towards invention.

He spent some time in the early part of 1817 in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, meeting with success in his profession. Miss Walker was also
there visiting friends, so we may presume that his stay was pleasant as
well as profitable.

In February of that year he accompanied his _fiancee_ to Charlestown, his
parents, naturally, wishing to make the acquaintance of the young lady,
and then returned to Portsmouth to finish his work there.

The visit of Miss Walker to Charlestown gave great satisfaction to all
concerned. On March 4, 1817, Morse writes to his parents from Portsmouth:
"I am under the agreeable necessity (shall I say) o