SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE. 205 



Morse said, "The fact that the presence of elec- 

 tricity can be made visible in any desired part of 

 the circuit was the crude seed which took root in 

 my mind, and grew up into form, and ripened into 

 the invention of the telegraph." 



Under Professor Benjamin Silliman, a name 

 greatly honored in science, Morse found great 

 delight and profit. He wrote to his parents, that 

 he should bring home "a chemical trough, gun- 

 barrels, retorts, etc." 



With this fondness for science, Morse showed a 

 decided ability in art. He took pictures of his 

 classmates, at one dollar each, and miniatures on 

 ivory at five dollars each, thus helping to pay his 

 expenses. The price charged was very low, but 

 possibly it was all the pictures were worth, for as 

 yet he had never taken a lesson. 



Long before his college course was at an end, he 

 had decided to become a painter, probably much 

 against the unspoken wishes of his parents, who 

 must have felt that poverty would be his compan- 

 ion, for some years, at best. 



On going home to Charlestown, he attended a 

 course of anatomical and surgical lectures in 

 Boston. Washington Allston, then at the head of 

 his profession in America, had spent two years in 

 Boston, and was about to return to Europe. Morse 

 went with him and took lodgings in London. At 

 once he wrote home, "I only wish you had this 

 letter now to relieve your minds from anxiety, for 

 while I am writing I can imagine mother wishing 



