wford, at that time a
prominent candidate for the Presidency in the coming election.

With his customary faith in an overruling Providence, Morse says later in
the same letter: "This delay and suspense tries me more than distance or
even absence from my dear family. If I could be on my way and pursuing my
profession I should feel much better. But all will be for the best;
though things look dark I can and will trust Him who will make my path of
duty plain before me. This satisfies my mind and does not allow a single
desponding thought."

The sending of the legation was indefinitely postponed, and Morse, much
disappointed but resolved not to be overwhelmed by this crushing of his
high hopes, returned to New Haven.

He spent the summer partly at home and partly in Concord, New Hampshire
(where his wife and children had gone to visit her father), and in
Portsmouth, Portland, and Hartford, having been summoned to those cities
by patrons who wished him to paint their portraits.

We can imagine that the young wife did not grieve over the failure of the
Mexican trip. Her letters to her husband at that period are filled with
expressions of the deepest affection, but with an undertone of
melancholy, due, no doubt, to the increasing delicacy of her health,
never very robust.

In the fall of 1824 Morse resolved to make another assault on the purses
of the solid men of New York, and he established himself at 96 Broadway,
where, for a time, he had the satisfaction of having his wife and
children with him. They, however, returned later to New Haven, and on
December 5, 1824, he writes to his wife:--

"I am fully employed and in excellent spirits. I am engaged in painting
the full-length portrait of Mr. Hone's little daughter, a pretty little
girl just as old as Susan. I have made a sketch of the composition with
which I am pleased, and so are the father and mother. I shall paint her
with a cat set up in her lap like a baby, with a towel under its chin and
a cap on its head, and she employed in feeding it with a spoon....

"I am as happy and contented as I can be without my dear Lucrece and our
dear children, but I hope it will not be long before we shall be able to
live together without these separations."

"_December 17, 1824._ I have everything very comfortable at my rooms. My
two pupils, Mr. Agate and Mr. Field, are very tractable and very useful.
I have everything 'in Pimlico,' as mother would say.

"I have begun, and th