y Charlestown people
would soon have to build a house for Mr. Morse. I let this drop in a
conversation with a daughter of Mr. Carey, and in a day or two it was
all over Charlestown, and the girls who had been setting their caps for
him are chagrined. I suppose it would be something to Mr. Morse's
advantage in point of bands and handkerchiefs, if this report could be
contradicted; but if it cannot, oh, how heavy will be the
disappointment. When a young clergyman settles in such a town as
Charlestown, there is as much looking out for him as there is for a
thousand-dollar prize in a lottery; and though the girls know that but
one can have him, yet 'who knows but I may be that one?'"[10]

Doctor Morse's fame has been a good deal obscured by that of his
distinguished son, but he seems none the less to have been a good deal
of a man, and it is perhaps no wonder that the feminine portion of a
little place like Charlestown looked forward with decided interest to
his settling among them. We can even fancy that the girls of the sewing
society studied geography with ardour when they learned who was to be
their new minister. For geography was Doctor Morse's passion; he was,
indeed, the Alexis Frye of his period. This interest in geography is
said to have been so tremendous with the man that once being asked by
his teacher at a Greek recitation where a certain verb was found, he
replied, "On the coast of Africa." And while he was a tutor at Yale the
want of geographies there induced him to prepare notes for his pupils,
to serve as text-books, which he eventually printed.

Young Morse seconded his father's passion for geography by one as
strongly marked for drawing, and the blank margin of his Virgil occupied
far more of his thoughts than the text. The inventor came indeed only
tardily to discover in which direction his real talent lay. All his
youth he worshipped art and followed (at considerable distance) his
beloved mistress. His penchant for painting, exhibited in much the same
manner as Allston's, his future master, did not meet with the same
encouragement.

A caricature (founded upon some fracas among the students at Yale), in
which the faculty were burlesqued, was seized during Morse's student
days, handed to President Dwight, and the author, who was no other than
our young friend, called up. The delinquent received a severe lecture
upon his waste of time, violation of college laws, and filial
disobedience, without exhibiti