not dare disturb any one by asking for paper and pencil, so he took
a large pin and scratched a picture on his mother's best mahogany
bureau. The scratches looked so like the man that Sammy clapped his
hands and shouted with laughter. His mother came running to see what had
happened and when she looked ready to cry and said: "Oh, Samuel Finley
Breese Morse--what _have_ you done?" he knew right away that something
was wrong. She usually called him just Sammy. It was only when she was
displeased that she used the whole long name. After this he was watched
pretty closely until he went to school. Then he grew so fond of reading
that there did not seem to be time for anything else.

In school it was noticed that Samuel Morse had better lessons than most
of the boys, and that when it came to questions in history or questions
about pictures and artists, it was Samuel who was able to answer them.
When he was fourteen, he wrote a life of a noted Greek scholar. It was
not published, but it was very good. He also painted pictures in water
colors of his home and portraits of all the family. These were so
perfect that every one said he should go to Europe and study with the
famous Benjamin West. Finally his parents agreed that this was the right
thing for him to do, but they said he would have to live very simply,
because the Morses were not rich.

Samuel did not mind working hard, eating little, or dressing shabbily,
if he could just study with a fine teacher. West noticed how willing
Samuel was to do his pictures over and over again, so he took much pains
with him. Samuel won several prizes and medals, and his pictures were
talked of everywhere.

Morse came back to Boston when he was twenty-four, poor and threadbare,
but famous. People flocked to see his pictures but did not buy them. So
he went to New York to try his luck in that city. From a little boy he
had liked to try experiments with magnets and electricity, so he often
went to lectures on electricity and thought about different things that
might be done with such a force, if only people could learn how to use
it. These lecturers that he heard often made the remark: "If only
electricity could be made to _write_!"

This sentence kept going through Samuel's head, as he sat at his easel,
painting. It stayed in his mind when he went to Europe for the second
time. It followed him aboard ship when he was returning from that second
trip, sad and discouraged, because a big pict