n dollars be of any service?" asked the student, astonished
and distressed.

"Ten dollars would save my life," was Morse's reply.

The student paid the money--all he had--and they dined together, Morse
remarking that it was his first meal for twenty-four hours.

Morse's situation and feelings at this time are also illustrated by a
letter he wrote to Smith late in 1841.

I find myself [he wrote] without sympathy or help from any
who are associated with me, whose interests, one would think,
would impell them to at least inquire if they could render me
some assistance. For nearly two years past I have devoted all
my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying
myself all pleasures and even necessary food, that I might
have a sum, to put my telegraph into such a position before
Congress as to insure success to the common enterprise. I
am crushed for want of means, and means of so trifling a
character, too, that they who know how to ask (which I do not)
could obtain in a few hours.... As it is, although everything
is favorable, although I have no competition and no
opposition--on the contrary, although every member of
Congress, so far as I can learn, is favorable--yet I fear all
will fail because I am too poor to risk the trifling expense
which my journey and residence in Washington will occasion me.
I will not run in debt, if I lose the whole matter. No one can
tell the days and months of anxiety and labor I have had in
perfecting my telegraphic apparatus. For want of means I have
been compelled to make with my own hands (and to labor for
weeks) a piece of mechanism which could be made much better,
and in a tenth the time, by a good mechanician, thus
wasting time--time which I cannot recall and which seems
double-winged to me.

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." It is true, and I have
known the full meaning of it. Nothing but the consciousness
that I have an invention which is to mark an era in human
civilization, and which is to contribute to the happiness of
millions, would have sustained me through so many and such
lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it.

A patent on the telegraph had been issued to Morse in 1840. The
issuance had been delayed at Morse's request, as he desired to first
secure foreign patents, his own American rights being protected by the
caveat he had