The first telegraphic machine.-In September, 1837, Mr. Morse invited the professors of the University, besides

others who were interested

in his work, to come and see what he was able to do with his invention. Seventeen hundred feet of wire had been stretched around his rooms, and through this several messages were sent. The receiving instrument was so made that the words were written in telegraphic symbols - -on a long strip of paper. The machine was of course very imperfect and crude, but it did all that was claimed for it.

An early telegraphic machine

IV. SUCCESS AT LAST

Delays. - Mr. Morse at once applied for a patent on his invention, and he petitioned Congress to aid him in building a line of telegraph. After this there were many vexatious delays. Money was needed to carry on the work, and but few men were willing to take any risks in an enterprise about which they understood so little. To send messages over a wire without also sending the paper upon which they were written, seemed to most people utterly impossible. Years of discouragement and poverty followed. It was not until March, 1843, that Congress at length consented to grant thirty thousand dollars for the construction of a trial line between Baltimore and Washington.

The distance from Washington to Baltimore is about forty miles, and work was begun at the Washington end. About half of the line was finished, when a convention of Whigs met in Baltimore for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the presidency of the United States. Mr. Morse resolved to test the practical value of his telegraph. The convention chose Henry Clay as its candidate. The news was at once carried by railroad train to the nearest point that had been reached by the telegraph line. From that point it was sent over the wires to Washington. The train went onward, and at length also arrived in WashingWhat was the surprise of the passengers to find that the news of Clay's nomination had reached the city nearly an hour before! This was the first real news message ever transmitted by electric telegraph.

ton.

The first message. A few weeks later the line was finished, and on the 24th of May, 1844, it was ready for operation. Mr. Morse and his friends met in the chamber of the supreme court of the United States to celebrate its formal opening. Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, of Washington, had been the first to tell Mr. Morse of the action of Congress in granting him the aid which he had asked for; and to her was given the honor of choosing the words for the first message. They were these: "What hath God wrought?" The strip of paper on which the characters were printed by the telegraphic instrument may still be seen in the Athenæum at Hartford, Connecticut. There was no longer working of the tele

First earnings of the telegraph. any question about the successful

graph; but people did not at once appreciate its usefulness. During the first year the line was controlled by the post office department at Washington. One cent was charged for every four letters or characters in messages transmitted to Baltimore. The receipts during the first four days

were only one cent; during the next four they amounted to something over three dollars.

Mr. Morse offered to sell his telegraph to the government. But Congress refused to give the hundred thousand dollars which he required for it. A private company called the Magnetic Telegraph Company then obtained control of it, and soon there were telegraphs in all parts of our

country. Other persons tried to invent machines better than Morse's; they infringed upon his patents; they did all that they could to deprive him of both the honor and the profit which belonged to him as the inventor of the telegraph. In the end, however, he triumphed over all opposition.

The Atlantic cable. In 1858, when Professor Morse was sixty-seven years old, the first telegraphic cable was laid across the Atlantic Ocean. Only about four hundred messages were sent by this cable, and then it ceased to work. Eight years later another cable was laid. It was twenty-three hundred miles in length and weighed forty thousand tons. Since that time it has been possible at any time to send messages instantaneously from our country to almost any city in Europe. There are now several ocean cables all in working condition.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse lived to be more than eighty years of age. He died honored by all the world as one of the greatest inventors of the times.

REVIEW

Name some of the useful ways in which electricity is now employed. Who first discovered that lightning and thunder are caused by electricity? When Samuel F. B. Morse was in college, how long a time was required for news to come from London to New York? What battle would never have been fought had there been an ocean telegraph cable at that time? What first caused Mr. Morse to believe in the possibility of an electric telegraph? If there were no telegraph lines now, would it be possible to carry on business as at present? Why? Why is Samuel F. B. Morse to be considered as one of the great benefactors of our country?

HENRY CLAY

AND THE COMPROMISES BETWEEN THE NORTH

AND THE SOUTH

I. THE MILL BOY OF THE SLASHES

The schoolhouse. In Hanover County, Virginia, there is a marshy district, which on account of its many swamps is known as the "Slashes." Here there stood during Revolutionary times a little log schoolhouse which had neither floor nor ceiling nor any windows. At one end of it there was a wide door which was never closed; at the other there was a huge fireplace made of stones and burnt clay. Between the door and the fireplace there were three or four long, narrow benches, without backs, where the boys sat and hummed aloud their lessons in spelling and reading. Except a stool for the teacher, and a shelf or two on the wall, there was no other furniture. Outside of the little building everything was dismal and bare - desolate bogs and lonely farms and a landscape devoid of beauty.

Henry Clay. Among the children of the Slashes who attended school at that poor place there was a thin-faced, light-haired, barefooted little fellow, whose name was Henry Clay. This child was six years old when the treaty of peace was made, which gave to the American colonies their liberty. His father was dead. His mother was very