born, with which the weary work of the education of congressmen would have to be gone over again. The inventor had been given half a loaf. His bill had been passed, on February 23, in the House. All day of March 3 he hung about the Senate chamber petitioning, where possible, for the other half of his loaf, faintly hoping that in the last will and testament of the expiring Congress some small legacy might be left for him.

Evening came. The clock-hands circled rapidly round. Pressure of bills and confusion of legislation grew greater minute by minute. The floodgates of the deluge are lifted upon Congress in its last hours, and business pours onward in such an overwhelming fashion that small private petitioners can scarcely hope that the doors of the ark of safety will be opened to their petty claims. Morse hung about the chamber until the midnight hour was almost ready to strike. Every moment confusion seemed to grow worse confounded." The work of a month of easy-going legislation was being compressed into an hour of haste and excitement. The inventor at last left the Capitol, a saddened and disappointed man, and made his way home, the last shreds of hope seeming to drop from him as he went. He was almost ready to give up the fight, and devote himself for the future solely to brush and pencil.

He slept but poorly that night, and rose the next morning still depressed and gloomy. He appeared at the breakfast-table with a face from which the very color of ambition seemed to have been washed out. As he entered the room he was met by a young

lady, Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of the Com missioner of Patents. The smile on her beaming face was in striking contrast to the gloom on his downcast countenance.

"I have come to congratulate you, Mr. Morse." she said, cheerily.

"For what, my dear friend?"

"For the passage of your bill."

"What!" he gazed at her in amazement. Could she be attempting a foolish and cruel jest? "The passage of my bill!" he faltered.

"Yes. Do you not know of it?"

"No."

"Then you came home too early last night. And I am happy in being the first to bring you the good news. Congress has granted your claim."

It was true: he had been remembered in the will of the expiring Congress. In the last hour of the Senate, amid the roar of the deluge of public business, his small demand had floated into sight, and thirty thousand dollars had been voted him for the construction of an experimental telegraph line.

"You have given me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "As a reward for your good tidings I promise you that when my telegraph line is completed, you shall have the honor of choosing the first message to be sent over it."

The inventor was highly elated, and not without reason. Since the morning of the conversation on the ship Sully, eleven and a half years had passed. They had been years of such struggle against poverty and discouragement as only a man who is the slave

of an idea has the hardihood to endure. The annals of invention contain many such instances; more, perhaps, than can be found in any other channel of human effort.

To complete our story we have to bring another inventor upon the stage. This was Ezra Cornell, memorable to-day as the founder of Cornell University, a man at that time unknown, but filled with inventive ideas, and ready to undertake any task that might offer itself, from digging a well to boring a mountain tunnel. One day Mr. Cornell, who was at that time occupying the humble position of travelling agent for a patent plough, called at the office of an agricultural newspaper in Portland, Maine. He found the editor on his knees, a piece of chalk in his hand, and parts of a plough by his side, making drawings on the floor, and trying to explain something to a plough-maker beside him. The editor looked up at his visitor, and an expression of relief replaced the perplexity on his face.

"Cornell," he cried, "you're the very man I want to see. I want a scraper made, and I can't make Robinson here see into my idea. You can understand it, and make it for me, too."

"What is your scraper to do?" asked Cornell.

Mr. Smith, the editor, rose from his knees and explained. A line of telegraph was to be built from Baltimore to Washington. Congress had granted the money. He had taken the contract from Professor Morse to lay the tube in which the wire was to be placed. He had made a bad bargain, he feared. The job was going to cost more than he had calcu

lated on. He was trying to invent something that would dig the ditch, and fill in the dirt again after the pipe was laid. Cornell listened to him, questioned him, found out the size of the pipe and the depth of the ditch, then sat down and passed some minutes in hard thinking. Finally he said,—

"You are on the wrong tack. either a ditch or a scraper."

You don't want

He took a pencil and in a few minutes outlined a machine, which he said would cut a trench two feet deep, lay the pipe at its bottom, and cover the earth in behind it. The motive power need be only a team of oxen or mules. These creatures had but to trudge slowly onward. The machine would do its work faithfully behind them.

"Come, come, this is impossible!" cried editor Smith. "I'll wager my head it can be done, and I can do it," replied inventor Cornell.

He laid a large premium on his confidence in his idea, promising that if his machine would not work he would ask no money for it. But if it succeeded, he was to be well paid. Smith agreed to these terms, and Cornell went to work.

In ten days the machine was built and ready for trial. A yoke of oxen was attached to it, three men managed it, and in the first five minutes it had laid one hundred feet of pipe and covered it with earth. It was a decided success. Mr. Smith had contracted to lay the pipe for one hundred dollars a mile. A short calculation proved to him that, with the aid of Ezra Cornell's machine, ninety dollars of this would be profit.

But the shrewd editor did not feel like risking

Cornell's machine in any hands but those of the inventor. He made him a profitable offer if he would go to Baltimore and take charge of the job himself. It would pay better than selling patent ploughs. Cornell agreed to go.

Reaching Baltimore, he met Professor Morse. They had never met before. Their future lives were to be closely associated. In the conversation that ensued Morse explained what he proposed to do. An electric wire might either be laid underground or carried through the air. He had decided on the underground system, the wire being coated by an insulating compound and drawn through a pipe.

Cornell questioned him closely, got a clear idea of the scheme, saw the pipe that was to be used, and expressed doubts of its working.

"It will work, for it has worked," said Morse. "While I have been fighting Congress, inventors in Europe have been experimenting with the telegraphic idea. Short lines have been laid in England and elsewhere, in which the wire is carried in buried pipes. They had been successful. What can be done in Europe can be done in America."

What Morse said was a fact. While he had been pushing his telegraph conception in America it had been tried successfully in Europe. But the system adopted there, of vibrating needle signals, was so greatly inferior to the Morse system, that it was destined in the future to be almost or quite set aside by the latter. To-day the Morse system and alphabet are used in much the greater number of the telegraph-offices of the world.