vote was taken and listened to the irreverent badinage
of Congressmen as they discussed his bill. One member proposed an
amendment to set aside half the amount for experiments in mesmerism,
another suggested that the Millerites should have a part of the money,
and so on; however, they passed the bill. And that night Morse wrote:
"The long agony is over."

But the agony was not over. The bill had yet to pass the Senate. The
last day of the expiring session of Congress arrived, March 3, 1843, and
the Senate had not reached the bill. Says Morse's biographer:

In the gallery of the Senate Professor Morse had sat all the last day
and evening of the session. At midnight the session would close. Assured
by his friends that there was no possibility of the bill being reached,
he left the Capitol and retired to his room at the hotel, dispirited,
and well-nigh broken-hearted. As he came down to breakfast the next
morning, a young lady entered, and, coming toward him with a smile,
exclaimed:

"I have come to congratulate you!"

"For what, my dear friend?" asked the professor, of the young lady, who
was Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of his friend the Commissioner of
Patents.

"On the passage of your bill."

The professor assured her it was not possible, as he remained in the
Senate-Chamber until nearly midnight, and it was not reached. She then
informed him that her father was present until the close, and, in the
last moments of the session, the bill was passed without debate or
revision. Professor Morse was overcome by the intelligence, so joyful
and unexpected, and gave at the moment to his young friend, the bearer
of these good tidings, the promise that she should send the first
message over the first line of telegraph that was opened.*

*Prime, p. 465.

Morse and his partners* then proceeded to the construction of the
forty-mile line of wire between Baltimore and Washington. At this point
Ezra Cornell, afterwards a famous builder of telegraphs and founder
of Cornell University, first appears in history as a young man of
thirty-six. Cornell invented a machine to lay pipe underground
to contain the wires and he was employed to carry out the work of
construction. The work was commenced at Baltimore and was continued
until experiment proved that the underground method would not do, and it
was decided to string the wires on poles. Much time had been lost, but
once the system of poles was adopted the work progres