er continents and under oceans
at lightning speed, then jogged on at stage-coach rates of
progress, creeping where they now fly. On the ocean, steam
was beginning to battle with wind and wave, but the ocean
racer was yet a far-off dream, and mariners still put their
trust in sails much more than in the new-born contrivances
which were preparing to revolutionize travel. But the wand
of the enchanter had been waved; steam had come, and with it
the new era of progress had dawned. And another great agent
in the development of civilization was about to come.
Electricity, which during all previous time had laughed at
bonds, was soon to become man's slave, and to be made his
purveyor of news. It is the story of this chaining of the
lightning, and forcing it to become the swift conveyer of
man's sayings and doings, that we have here to tell.

In the far remote period named--if we measure time by
deeds, not by years--a packet-ship, the Sully, was making
its deliberate way across the Atlantic from Havre to New
York. Its passenger list was not large,--the ocean had not
yet become a busy highway of the continents,--but among them
were some persons in whom we are interested. One of these
was a Boston doctor, Charles T. Jackson by name. A second
was a New York artist, named Samuel F.B. Morse. The
last-named gentleman had been a student at Yale, where he
became greatly interested in chemistry and some other
sciences. He had studied the art of painting under Benjamin
West in London, had practised it in New York, had long been
president of the National Academy of the Arts of Design; and
was now on his way home after a second period of residence
in Europe as a student of art.

An interesting conversation took place one day in the cabin
of the Sully. Dr. Jackson spoke of Amp[`e]re's experiments with
the electro-magnet; of how Franklin had sent electricity
through several miles of wire, finding no loss of time
between the touch at one end and the spark at the other; and
how, in a recent experiment at Paris, a great length of wire
had been carried in circles around the walls of a large
apartment, an electro-magnet connected with one end, and an
electric current manifested at the other, having passed
through the wire so quickly as to seem instantaneous. Mr.
Morse's taste for science had not died out during his years
of devotion to art. He listened with the most earnest
attention to the doctor's narrative, and while he did so a
large