ce, which, at that time, was but in its infancy, and he foresaw
great and beneficial results to mankind from this mysterious force when
it should become more fully understood.

Morse, already familiar with the subject from his experiments with
Professor Silliman in New Haven, took a deep interest in these lectures,
and he and Professor Dana became warm friends. The latter, on his side a
great admirer of the fine arts, spent many hours in the studio of the
artist, discussing with him the two subjects which were of absorbing
interest to them both, art and electricity. In this way Morse became
perfectly familiar with the latest discoveries in electrical science, so
that when, a few years later, his grand conception of a simple and
practicable means of harnessing this mystic agent to the uses of mankind
took form in his brain, it found a field already prepared to receive it.
I wish to lay particular emphasis on this point because, in later years,
when his claims as an inventor were bitterly assailed in the courts and
in scientific circles, it was asserted that he knew nothing whatever of
the science of electricity at the time of his invention, and that all its
essential features were suggested to him by others.

In the year 1828, Morse again changed his quarters, moving to a suite of
rooms at No. 13 Murray Street, close to Broadway, for which he paid a
"great rent," $500, and on May 6 of that year he writes to his mother:

"Ever since I left you at New Haven I have been over head and ears in
arrangements of every kind. It is the busiest time of the whole year as
it regards the National Academy. We have got through the arrangement of
our exhibition and yesterday opened it to the guests of the Academy. We
had the first people in the city, ladies and gentlemen, thronging the
room all day, and the voice of all seemed to be--'It is the best
exhibition of the kind that has been seen in the city.'

"I am now arranging my rooms; they are very fine ones. I shall be through
in a few days, and then I hope to be able to come up and see you, for I
feel very anxious about you, my dear mother. I do most sincerely
sympathize with you in your troubles and long to come up and take some of
the care and burden from you, and will do it as soon as my affairs here
can be arranged so that I can leave them without serious detriment to
them.... What a siege you must have had with your _help_, as it is most
strangely called in New Haven. I am too a