h which he
passed need not here be recounted. They are sufficiently sad and
sufficiently humiliating. His unavailing appeals to the American
Congress are happily hidden in the rubbish of history, and are
somewhat dimmed by the intervention of more than half a century. But
his humiliation was extreme. Smart Congressmen, partisans, the
ignorant flotsam of conventions and intrigues, heard the philosopher
with contempt. A few heard him with sympathy; and the opinion in his
favor grew, as if by the pressure of shame, until he was finally
supported, and in a midnight hour of an expiring session of Congress,
or rather in the early morning of the fourth of March, 1843, the
munificent appropriation of $30,000 was placed at his disposal for the
construction of an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore.

The one thing was done. A new era of instantaneous communication
between men and communities at a distance the one from the other was
opened--an era which has proved to be an era of light and knowledge.
Nor may we conclude this sketch without noting the fact that, not a
few of the members of the House of Representatives who voted the
pittance for the construction of the first line of actual working
telegraph in the world, went home to their constituents and were
ignominiously beaten for re-election--this this for the slight
service which they had rendered to their country and the human race!

When in New York City, turn thou to the west out of Fifth avenue into
Twenty-second street, to the distance of, perhaps, ten rods, and there
on a little marble slab set in the wall of a house on the north side
of the street, read this curious epitaph:

"In this house lived Professor S.F.B, Morse for thirty years and
died!"

THE NEW LIGHT OF MEN.

By the law of nature our existence is divided between daylight and
darkness. There is evermore the alternate baptism into dawn and night.
The division of life is not perfect between sunshine and shadow; for
the sunshine bends around the world on both horizons, and lengthens
the hemisphere of day by a considerable rim of twilight. To this
reduction of the darkness we must add moonshine and starlight. But we
must also subtract the influence of the clouds and other incidental
conditions of obscuration. After these corrections are made, there is
for mankind a great band of deep night, wherein no man can work.
Whoever goes forth at some noon of night, when the sky is wrapped with
clou