At Concord, New Hampshire, Morse met Miss Lucretia Walker, a beautiful
and cultivated young woman, and they were married in 1818. Morse then
settled in New York. His reputation as a painter increased steadily,
though he gained little money, and in 1825 he was in Washington painting
a portrait of the Marquis La Fayette, for the city of New York, when he
heard from his father the bitter news of his wife's death in New Haven,
then a journey of seven days from Washington. Leaving the portrait of La
Fayette unfinished, the heartbroken artist made his way home.

Two years afterwards Morse was again obsessed with the marvels of
electricity, as he had been in college. The occasion this time was a
series of lectures on that subject given by James Freeman Dana before
the New York Athenaeum in the chapel of Columbia College. Morse attended
these lectures and formed with Dana an intimate acquaintance. Dana was
in the habit of going to Morse's studio, where the two men would talk
earnestly for long hours. But Morse was still devoted to his art;
besides, he had himself and three children to support, and painting was
his only source of income.

Back to Europe went Morse in 1829 to pursue his profession and perfect
himself in it by three years' further study. Then came the crisis.
Homeward bound on the ship Sully in the autumn of 1832, Morse fell into
conversation with some scientific men who were on board. One of the
passengers asked this question: "Is the velocity of electricity reduced
by the length of its conducting wire?" To which his neighbor replied
that electricity passes instantly over any known length of wire and
referred to Franklin's experiments with several miles of wire, in which
no appreciable time elapsed between a touch at one end and a spark at
the other.

Here was a fact already well known. Morse must have known it himself.
But the tremendous significance of that fact had never before occurred
to him nor, so far as he knew, to any man. A recording telegraph! Why
not? Intelligence delivered at one end of a wire instantly recorded at
the other end, no matter how long the wire! It might reach across the
continent or even round the earth. The idea set his mind on fire.

Home again in November, 1832, Morse found himself on the horns of a
dilemma. To give up his profession meant that he would have no income;
on the other hand, how could he continue wholeheartedly painting
pictures while consumed with the idea of the t