se Morse, a New Englander of old
Puritan stock. Nor is the glory that belongs to Morse in any way dimmed
by the fact that he made use of the discoveries of other men who had
been trying to unlock the secrets of electricity ever since Franklin's
experiments. If Morse discovered no new principle, he is nevertheless
the man of all the workers in electricity between his own day and
Franklin's whom the world most delights to honor; and rightly so, for it
is to such as Morse that the world is most indebted. Others knew; Morse
saw and acted. Others had found out the facts, but Morse was the first
to perceive the practical significance of those facts; the first to take
steps to make them of service to his fellows; the first man of them all
with the pluck and persistence to remain steadfast to his great design,
through twelve long years of toil and privation, until his countrymen
accepted his work and found it well done.

Morse was happy in his birth and early training. He was born in 1791, at
Charlestown, Massachusetts. His father was a Congregational minister and
a scholar of high standing, who, by careful management, was able to send
his three sons to Yale College. Thither went young Samuel (or Finley, as
he was called by his family) at the age of fourteen and came under the
influence of Benjamin Silliman, Professor of Chemistry, and of Jeremiah
Day, Professor of Natural Philosophy, afterwards President of Yale
College, whose teaching gave him impulses which in later years led
to the invention of the telegraph. "Mr. Day's lectures are very
interesting," the young student wrote home in 1809; "they are upon
electricity; he has given us some very fine experiments, the whole
class taking hold of hands form the circuit of communication and we all
receive the shock apparently at the same moment." Electricity, however,
was only an alluring study. It afforded no means of livelihood, and
Morse had gifts as an artist; in fact, he earned a part of his college
expenses painting miniatures at five dollars apiece. He decided,
therefore, that art should be his vocation.

A letter written years afterwards by Joseph M. Dulles of Philadelphia,
who was at New Haven preparing for Yale when Morse was in his senior
year, is worth reading here:

"I first became acquainted with him at New Haven, when about to graduate
with the class of 1810, and had such an association as a boy preparing
for college might have with a senior who was just finishing