354 1ELEQRAPHIN0 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
In the year 1832 a packet ship left Havana for New York. The 
passengers were merry and intelligent. They beguiled the tediousness 
of the long voyage by scientific discussions. They talked of inventions ; 
the discoveries of the day passed in review ; wonderful things were told 
of electricity. A gentleman from Boston rehearsed the marvellous 
things brought to light in relation to that mysterious and subtle agency. 
Among the company was Prof. Samuel F. B. Morse. When the Massa- 
chusetts gentleman closed his recital, Prof. Morse quietly remarked — 
" If these statements are true, if such discoveries have really been made, 
then I can send a message by lightning round the world." Then and 
there the great discovery was made. On the wide Atlantic — as if the 
invention that was to change the face of the world scorned the narrow 
limits of States or Nations — on the wide sea, whose waters touch all 
climes and bind all the nations of the earth in bonds of amity on the 
great highway of the commerce of the globe, the great telegraph system 
came to its birth. The packet ship reached New York in safety. Prof. 
Morse had been from his family and native shore for three years. His 
friends were on the dock waiting to receive him; but he seemed to see 
them not. He made no personal or social inquiries for his family from 
whom he had been so long absent. He seemed like one demented. He 
accepted the warm and cordial greetings coldly. His friends were grieved 
that so short a time had so changed a genial friend into a morose and 
unfeeling man. He was big with a great discovery that was to agitate 
and bless the world. He had no thought, no feeling, no faculty for any- 
body or thing, till the telegraph was a reality and beyond dispute put 
by the side of the great inventions of the age. 
The pathway of the telegraphic invention was through scorn, in- 
credulity, and derision. It was the old story of the persecution of 
Galileo and the refusal of the old monks to look through the telescope 
lest they should be convinced. The old story of Harvey, demonstrating 
his theory of the circulation of the blood to a gainsaying generation, 
losing his practice, and, as men thought, losing his senses and going 
mad. The old story of the league with the devil, on the part of the 
poor printer, who cut out the first wooden types with his penknife, and 
brought to the eye of the terrified literati the full printed page. It was 
Columbus on his wild voyage for a new world, Jenner fleeing from his 
indignant countrymen and not daring to go out doors at night, because, 
he said, the great plague of the small-pox could be stayed. It was Ful- 
ton starting on his steam voyage up the Hudson, while a crowd of ma- 
ligners looked on, wishing him an early and a complete failure. 
The telegraphic demonstration was slow, great difficulties had to be 
overcome, and before the telegraph was a working success, Prof. Morse 
faced all opposition. He accepted ridicule and derision. His attempt 
to get subscribers to the stock of a company was nearly a failure. 
Shrewd men, men of forecast, would have nothing to do with the fiery 
scheme or the visionary inventor. One of the shrewdest men who 
