has been beautifully blended with official dignity.

I will address respectively to the honorable ministers who were Your
Excellency's colleagues a letter of thanks for their participation in
this act of high honor to me.

I beg Your Excellency to accept the assurances of my lasting gratitude
and highest consideration in subscribing myself

Your Excellency's most obedient humble servant,
SAMUEL F.B. MORSE.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SEPTEMBER 3, 1858--SEPTEMBER 21, 1863

Visits Europe again with a large family party.--Regrets this.--Sails for
Porto Rico with wife and two children.--First impressions of the
tropics.--Hospitalities.--His son-in-law's plantation.--Death of Alfred
Vail.--Smithsonian exonerates Henry.--European honors to Morse.--First
line of telegraph in Porto Rico.--Banquet.--Returns home.--Reception at
Poughkeepsie.--Refuses to become candidate for the Presidency.--Purchases
New York house.--F.O.J. Smith claims part of European gratuity.--Succeeds
through legal technicality.--Visit of Prince of Wales.--Duke of
Newcastle.--War clouds.--Letters on slavery, etc.--Matthew Vassar.--
Efforts as peacemaker.--Foresees Northern victory.--Gloomy forebodings.--
Monument to his father.--Divides part of European gratuity with widow of
Vail.--Continued efforts in behalf of peace.--Bible arguments in favor of
slavery.

Many letters of this period, including a whole letterpress copy-book, are
missing, many of the letters in other copy-books are quite illegible
through the fading of the ink, and others have been torn out (by whom I
do not know) and have entirely disappeared. It will, therefore, be
necessary to summarize the events of the remainder of the year 1858, and
of some of the following years.

We find that, on July 24, 1858, Morse sailed with his family, including
his three young boys, his mother-in-law and other relatives, a party of
fifteen all told, for Havre on the steamer Fulton; that he was tendered a
banquet by his fellow-countrymen in Paris, and that he was received with
honor wherever he went. Travelling with a large family was a different
proposition from the independence which he had enjoyed on his previous
visits to Europe, when he was either alone or accompanied only by his
wife and niece, and he pathetically remarks to his brother Sidney, in a
letter of September 3, written from Interlaken: "It was a great mistake I
committed in bringing my family. I have scarcely had one moment's
pleasure, and