teeth or projections on its upper face, and as it was passed through
a gap in the circuit the teeth would make or break the current. At the
other end of the line the currents thus transmitted would excite the
electro-magnet, actuate the pencil, and draw a zig-zag line on the
paper, every angle being a distinct signal, and the groups of signals
representing a word in the code.

During the voyage of six weeks the artist jotted his crude ideas in his
sketch-book, which afterwards became a testimony to their date. That
he cherished hopes of his invention may be gathered from his words on
landing, 'Well, Captain Pell, should you ever hear of the telegraph one
of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was
made on the good ship Sully.'

Soon after his return his brothers gave him a room on the fifth floor
of a house at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York. For
a long time it was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bedroom.
With his livelihood to earn by his brush, and his invention to work out,
Morse was now fully occupied. His diet was simple; he denied himself the
pleasures of society, and employed his leisure in making models of
his types. The studio was an image of his mind at this epoch. Rejected
pictures looked down upon his clumsy apparatus, type-moulds lay among
plaster-casts, the paint-pot jostled the galvanic battery, and the easel
shared his attention with the lathe. By degrees the telegraph allured
him from the canvas, and he only painted enough to keep the wolf from
the door. His national picture, 'The Signing of the First Compact on
Board the Mayflower,' was never finished, and the 300 dollars which had
been subscribed for it were finally returned with interest.

For Morse by nature was proud and independent, with a sensitive horror
of incurring debt. He would rather endure privation than solicit help
or lie under a humiliating obligation. His mother seems to have been
animated with a like spirit, for the Hon. Amos Kendall informs us that
she had suffered much through the kindness of her husband in becoming
surety for his friends, and that when she was dying she exacted a
promise from her son that he would never endanger his peace of mind and
the comfort of his home by doing likewise.

During the two and a half years from November, 1832, to the summer of
1835 he was obliged to change his residence three times, and want of
money prevented him from combining the severa