nn Breeze, apparently of Welsh extraction, and
the grand-daughter of Samuel Finley, a distinguished President of the
Princeton College. Jedediah Morse is reputed a man of talent, industry,
and vigour, with high aims for the good of his fellow-men, ingenious
to conceive, resolute in action, and sanguine of success. His wife is
described as a woman of calm, reflective mind, animated conversation,
and engaging manners.

They had two other sons besides Samuel, the second of whom, Sidney E.
Morse, was founder of the New York OBSERVER, an able mathematician,
author of the ART OF CEROGRAPHY, or engraving upon wax, to stereotype
from, and inventor of a barometer for sounding the deep-sea. Sidney was
the trusted friend and companion of his elder brother.

At the age of four Samuel was sent to an infant school kept by an old
lady, who being lame, was unable to leave her chair, but carried her
authority to the remotest parts of her dominion by the help of a long
rattan. Samuel, like the rest, had felt the sudden apparition of this
monitor. Having scratched a portrait of the dame upon a chest of drawers
with the point of a pin, he was called out and summarily punished. Years
later, when he became notable, the drawers were treasured by one of his
admirers.

He entered a preparatory school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven
years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. Among other books, he was
delighted with Plutarch's LIVES, and at thirteen he composed a biography
of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family. A year later he entered
Yale College as a freshman.

During his curriculum he attended the lectures of Professor Jeremiah Day
on natural philosophy and Professor Benjamin Sieliman on chemistry, and
it was then he imbibed his earliest knowledge of electricity. In 1809-10
Dr. Day was teaching from Enfield's text-book on philosophy, that 'if
the (electric) circuit be interrupted, the fluid will become visible,
and when: it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate
body,' and he illustrated this by sending the spark through a metal
chain, so that it became visible between the links, and by causing it to
perforate paper. Morse afterwards declared this experiment to have been
the seed which rooted in his mind and grew into the 'invention of the
telegraph.'

It is not evident that Morse had any distinct idea of the electric
telegraph in these days; but amidst his lessons in literature and
philosophy he took a s