All this is interesting, but, of course, has no direct bearing on the
actual date of invention. It is more than probable that Morse did, while
he was studying the French semaphores, and at an even earlier date, dream
vaguely of the possibility of using electricity for conveying
intelligence, and that he gave utterance among his intimates to these
dreams; but the practical means of so utilizing this mysterious agent did
not take shape in his mind until 1832. An inchoate vision of the
possibility of using electricity is far different from an actual plan
eventually elaborated into a commercial success.

Another extract from Mr. Habersham's reminiscences, on a totally
different subject, will be found interesting: "I have forgot to mention
that one day, while in the Rue Surenne, I was studying from my own face
reflected in a glass, as is often done by young artists, when I remarked
how grand it would be if we could invent a method of fixing the image on
the mirror. Professor Morse replied that he had thought of it while a
pupil at Yale, and that Professor Silliman (I think) and himself had
tried it with a wash of nitrate of silver on a piece of paper, but that,
unfortunately, it made the lights _dark_ and the shadows _light_, but
that if they could be reversed, we should have a facsimile like India-ink
drawings. Had they thought of using glass, as is now done, the
daguerreotype would have been perhaps anticipated--certainly the
photograph."

This is particularly interesting because, as I shall note later on, Morse
was one of the pioneers in experimenting with the daguerreotype in
America.

Among the paintings which Morse executed while he was in Paris was a very
ambitious one. This was an interior of one of the galleries in the Louvre
with carefully executed miniature copies of some of the most celebrated
canvases. Writing of it, and of the dreadful epidemic of cholera, to his
brothers on May 6, 1832, he says:--

"My anxiety to finish my picture and to return drives me, I fear, to too
great application and too little exercise, and my health has in
consequence been so deranged that I have been prevented from the speedy
completion of my picture. From nine o'clock until four daily I paint
uninterruptedly at the Louvre, and, with the closest application, I shall
not be able to finish it before the close of the gallery on the 10th of
August. The time each morning before going to the gallery is wholly
employed in preparatio