Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume II Part 38

Standing uncovered in the biting air, he delivered the following short address:--

"MR. DE GROOT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS,--I esteem it one of my highest honors that I should have been designated to perform the office of unveiling this day the fine statue of our ill.u.s.trious and immortal Franklin. When requested to accept this duty I was confined to my bed, but I could not refuse, and I said: 'Yes, if I have to be lifted to the spot!'

"Franklin needs no eulogy from me. No one has more reason to venerate his name than myself. May his ill.u.s.trious example of devotion to the interest of universal humanity be the seed of further fruit for the good of the world."

Morse was to have been an honored guest at the banquet in the evening, where in the speeches his name was coupled with that of Franklin as one of the great benefactors of mankind; but, yielding to the wishes of his family, he remained at home. He had all his life been a sufferer from severe headaches, and now these neuralgic pains increased in severity, no doubt aggravated by his exposure at the unveiling. When the paroxysms were upon him he walked the floor in agony, pressing his hands to his temples; but these seizures were, mercifully, not continuous, and he still wrote voluminous letters, and tried to solve the problems which were thrust upon him, even to the end.

One of the last acts of his life was to go down town with his youngest son, whose birthday was the 29th of March, to purchase for him his first gold watch, and that watch the son still carries, a precious memento of his father.

Gradually the pains in the head grew less severe, but great weakness followed, and he was compelled to keep to his bed, sinking into a peaceful, painless unconsciousness relieved by an occasional flash of his old vigor. To his pastor, Reverend Dr. William Adams, he expressed his grat.i.tude for the goodness of G.o.d to him, but added: "The best is yet to come." He roused himself on the 29th of March, the birthday of his son, kissing him and gazing with pleasure on a drawing sent to the boy by his cousin, Mary Goodrich, p.r.o.nouncing it excellent.

Shortly before the end pneumonia set in, and one of the attending physicians, tapping on his chest, said "This is the way we doctors telegraph"; and the dying man, with a momentary gleam of the old humor lighting up his fading eyes, whispered, "Very good." These were the last words spoken by him.

From a letter written by one who was present at his bedside to another member of the family I shall quote a few words: "He is fast pa.s.sing away.

It is touching to see him so still, so unconscious of all that is pa.s.sing, waiting for death. He has suffered much with neuralgia of the head, increased of late by a miserable pamphlet by F.O.J.S. Poor dear man! Strange that they could not leave him in peace in his old age. But now all sorrow is forgotten. He lies quiet infant. Heaven is opening to him with its peace and perfect rest. The doctor calls his sickness 'exhaustion of the brain.' He looks very handsome; the light of Heaven seems shining on his beautiful eyes."

On April 1, consciousness returned for a few moments and he recognized his wife and those around him with a smile, but without being able to speak. Then he gradually sank to sleep and on the next day he gently breathed his last.

His faithful and loving friend, James D. Reid, in the Journal of the Telegraph, of which he was editor, paid tribute to his memory in the following touching words:--

"In the ripeness and mellow sunshine of the end of an honored and protracted life Professor Morse, the father of the American Telegraph system, our own beloved friend and father, has gone to his rest. The telegraph, the child of his own brain, has long since whispered to every home in all the civilized world that the great inventor has pa.s.sed away.

Men, as they pa.s.s each other on the street, say, with the subdued voice of personal sorrow, 'Morse is dead.' Yet to us he lives. If he is dead it is only to those who did not know him.

"It is not the habit of ardent affection to be garrulous in the excitement of such an occasion as this. It would fain gaze on the dead face in silence. The pen, conscious of its weakness, hesitates in its work of endeavoring to reveal that which the heart can alone interpret in a language sacred to itself, and by tears no eye may ever see. For such reason we, who have so much enjoyed the sweetness of the presence of this venerable man, now so calm in his last sacred sleep, to whom he often came, with his cheerful and gentle ways, as to a son, so confiding of his heart's tenderest thoughts, so free in the expression of his hopes of the life beyond, find difficulty in making the necessary record of his decease. We can only tell what the world has already known by the everywhere present wires, that, on the evening of Tuesday, April 2, Professor Morse, in the beautiful serenity of Christian hope, after a life extended beyond fourscore years, folded his hands upon his breast and bade the earth, and generation, and nation he had honored, farewell."

In the "Evening Post," probably from the pen of his old friend William Cullen Bryant, was the following:--

"The name of Morse will always stand in the foremost rank of the great inventors, each of whom has changed the face of society and given a new direction to the growth of civilization by the application to the arts of one great thought. It will always be read side by side with those of Gutenberg and Schoeffer, or Watt and Fulton. This eminence he fairly earned by one splendid invention. But none who knew the man will be satisfied to let this world-wide and forever growing monument be the sole record of his greatness.

"Had he never thought of the telegraph he would still receive, in death, the highest honors friendship and admiration can offer to distinguished and varied abilities, a.s.sociated with a n.o.ble character. In early life he showed the genius of a truly great artist. In after years he exercised all the powers of a masterly scientific investigator. Throughout his career he was eminent for the loftiness of his aims, for his resolute faith in the strength of truth, for his capacity to endure and to wait; and for his fidelity alike to his convictions and to his friends.

"His intellectual eminence was limited to no one branch of human effort, but, in the judgment of men who knew him best, he had endowments which might have made him, had he not been the chief of inventors, the most powerful of advocates, the boldest and most effective of artists, the most discerning of scientific physicians, or an administrative officer worthy of the highest place and of the best days in American history."

The New York "Herald" said:--

"Morse was, perhaps, the most ill.u.s.trious American of his age. Looking over the expanse of the ages, we think more earnestly and lovingly of Cadmus, who gave us the alphabet; of Archimedes, who invented the lever; of Euclid, with his demonstrations in geometry; of Faust, who taught us how to print; of Watt, with his development of steam, than of the resonant orators who inflamed the pa.s.sions of mankind, and the gallant chieftains who led mankind to war. We decorate history with our Napoleons and Wellingtons, but it was better for the world that steam was demonstrated to be an active, manageable force, than that a French Emperor and his army should win the battle of Austerlitz. And when a Napoleon of peace, like the dead Morse, has pa.s.sed away, and we come to sum up his life, we gladly see that the world is better, society more generous and enlarged, and mankind nearer the ultimate fulfillment of its earthly mission because he lived; and did the work that was in him."

The Louisville "Courier-Journal" went even higher in its praise:--

"If it is legitimate to measure a man by the magnitude of his achievements, the greatest man of the nineteenth century is dead. Some days ago the electric current brought us the intelligence that S.F.B.

Morse was smitten with, paralysis. Since then it has brought us the bulletins of his condition as promptly as if we had been living in the same square, entertaining us with hopes which the mournful sequel has proven to be delusive, for the magic wires have just thrilled with the tidings to all nations that the father of telegraphy has pa.s.sed to the eternal world. Almost as quietly as the all-seeing eye saw the soul depart from that venerable form, mortal men, thousands of miles distant, are apprised of the same fact by the swift messenger which he won from the unknown--speaking, as it goes around its world-wide circuit, in all the languages of earth.

"Professor Morse took no royal road to this discovery. Indeed it is never a characteristic of genius to seek such roads. He was dependent, necessarily, upon facts and principles brought to light by similar diligent, patient minds which had gone before him. Volta, Galvani, Morcel, Grove, Faraday, Franklin, and a host of others had laid a basis of laws and theories upon which he humbly and reverently mounted and arranged his great problem for the hoped-for solution. But to him was reserved the sole, undivided glory of discovering the priceless gem, 'richer than all its tribe,' which lay just beneath the surface, and around which so many _savans_ had blindly groped.

"He is dead, but his mission was fully completed. It has been no man's fortune to leave behind him a more magnificent legacy to earth, or a more absolute t.i.tle to a glorious immortality. To the honor of being one of the most distinguished benefactors of the human race, he added the personal and social graces and virtues of a true gentleman and a Christian philosopher; The memory of his private worth will be kept green amid the immortals of sorrowing friendship for a lifetime only, but his life monument will endure among men as long as the human race exists upon earth."

The funeral services were held on Friday, April 5, at the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. At eleven o'clock the long procession entered the church in the following order:--

Rev. Wm. Adams, D.D., Rev. F.B. Wheeler, D.D.

COFFIN.

PALL-BEARERS.

William Orton, Cyrus W. Field, Daniel Huntington, Charles Butler, Peter Cooper, John A. Dix, Cambridge Livingston, Ezra Cornell.

The Family.

Governor Hoffman and Staff.

Members of the Legislature.

Directors of the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company.

Directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company and officers and operators.

Members of the National Academy of Design.

Members of the Evangelical Alliance.

Members of the Chamber of Commerce.

Members of the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Members of the New York Stock Exchange.

Delegations from the Common Councils of New York, Brooklyn and Poughkeepsie and many of the Yale Alumni.

The Legislative Committee: Messrs. James W. Husted, L. Bradford Prince, Samuel J. Tilden, Severn D. Moulton and John Simpson.

The funeral address, delivered by Dr. Adams, was long and eloquent, and near the conclusion he said:--

"To-day we part forever with all that is mortal of that man who has done so much in the cause of Christian civilization. Less than one year ago his fellow-citizens, chiefly telegraphic operators, who loved him as children love a father, raised his statue in Central Park. To-day all we can give him is a grave. That venerable form, that face so saintly in its purity and refinement, we shall see no more. How much we shall miss him in our homes, our churches, in public gatherings, in the streets and in society which he adorned and blessed. But his life has been so useful, so happy and so complete that, for him, nothing remains to be wished.

Congratulate the man who, leaving to his family, friends and country a name spotless, untarnished, beloved of nations, to be repeated in foreign tongues and by sparkling seas, has died in the bright and blessed hope of everlasting life.

"Farewell, beloved friend, honored citizen, public benefactor, good and faithful servant!"

The three Morse brothers were united in death as they had been in life.

In Greenwood Cemetery a little hill had been purchased by the brothers and divided into three equal portions. On the summit of the hill there now stands a beautiful three-sided monument, and at its base reposes all that is mortal of these three upright men, each surrounded by those whom they had loved on earth, and who have now joined them in their last resting place.

Resolutions of sympathy came to the family from all over the world, and from bodies political, scientific, artistic, and mercantile, and letters of condolence from friends and from strangers.

In the House of Representatives, in Washington, the Honorable S.S. c.o.x offered a concurrent resolution, declaring that Congress has heard--"with profound regret of the death of Professor Morse, whose distinguished and varied abilities have contributed more than those of any other person to the development and progress of the practical arts, and that his purity of private life, his loftiness of scientific aims, and his resolute faith in truth, render it highly proper that the Representatives and Senators should solemnly testify to his worth and greatness."

This was unanimously agreed to. The Honorable Fernando Wood, after a brief history of the legislation which resulted in the grant of $30,000 to enable Morse to test his invention, added that he was proud to say that his name had been recorded in the affirmative on that historic occasion, and that he was then the only living member of either house who had so voted.

Similar resolutions were pa.s.sed in the Senate, and a committee was appointed by both houses to arrange for a suitable memorial service, and, on April 9, the following letter was sent to Mrs. Morse by A.S. Solomons, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements:--

DEAR MADAM,--Congress and the citizens of Washington purpose holding memorial services in honor of your late respected husband in the Hall of the House of Representatives, on Tuesday evening next, the 16th of April, and have directed me to request that yourself and family become the guests of the nation on that truly solemn occasion. If agreeable, be good enough to inform me when you will likely be here.

The widow was not able to accept this graceful invitation, but members of the family were present.

The Hall was crowded with a representative audience. James G. Blaine, Speaker of the House, presided, a.s.sisted by Vice-President Colfax.

President Grant and his Cabinet, Judges of the Supreme Court, Governors of States, and other dignitaries were present in person or by proxy. In front of the main gallery an oil portrait of Morse had been placed, and around the frame was inscribed the historic first message: "What hath G.o.d wrought."

After the opening prayer by Dr. William Adams, Speaker Blaine said:--

"Less than thirty years ago a man of genius and learning was an earnest pet.i.tioner before Congress for a small pecuniary aid that enabled him to test certain occult theories of science which he had laboriously evolved.

To-night the representatives of forty million people a.s.semble in their legislative hall to do homage and honor to the name of 'Morse.' Great discoverers and inventors rarely live to witness the full development and perfection of their mighty conceptions, but to him whose death we now mourn, and whose fame we celebrate, it was, in G.o.d's good providence, vouchsafed otherwise. The little thread of wire, placed as a timid experiment between the national capital and a neighboring city, grew and lengthened and multiplied with almost the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was bound unto continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths unto hemisphere, and an encircled globe flashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched elements of a grand achievement.