r, and, to avoid expense, I have been compelled
to make it entirely with my own hands. I can now give you its exact
dimensions--twelve and a half inches long, six and a half wide, and six
and a half deep. It dispenses entirely with boxes of type (one set alone
being necessary) and dispenses also with the rules, and with all
machinery for moving the rules. There is no winding up and it is ready at
all times. You touch the letter and the letter is written immediately at
the other extremity.... In my next I hope to send you reports of my
further progress. One thing seems certain, my Telegraph has driven out of
the field all the other plans on the magnetic principle. I hear nothing
of them in public or private. No society notices them."

"_February 2._ I can compare the state of things here to an April day, at
one moment sunshine, at the next cloudy. The Telegraph is evidently
growing in favor; testimonials of approbation and compliments multiply,
and yesterday I was advised by the secretary of the _Academie
Industrielle_ to interest moneyed men in the matter if I intended to
profit by it; and he observed that now was the precise time to do it in
the interval of the Chambers.

"I am at a loss how to act. I am not a business man and fear every
movement which suggests itself to me. I am thinking of proposing a
company on the same plan you last proposed in your letter from Liverpool,
and which you intend to create in case the Government shall choose to do
nothing; that is to say, a company taking the right at one thousand
francs per mile, paying the proprietors fifty per cent in stocks and
fifty per cent in cash, raising about fifty thousand francs for a trial
some distance. I shall take advice and let you know the result.

"I wish you were here; I am sure something could be done by an energetic
business man like yourself. As for poor me I feel that I am a child in
business matters. I can invent and perfect the invention, and demonstrate
its uses and practicability, but 'further the deponent saith not.'
Perhaps I underrate myself in this case, but that is not a usual fault in
human nature."

It was natural that a keen business man like F.O.J. Smith should have
leaned rather toward a private corporation, with its possibilities of
great pecuniary gain, than toward government ownership. Morse, on the
contrary, would have preferred, both at home and abroad, to place the
great power which he knew his invention was destined to wi