words to find utterance by all tongues—she builded better than she knew, for in the words of Speaker Blaine:
"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 to continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths to hemisphere, and an encircled globe dashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched eloquence of a grand achievement."
Words of praise, spoke by Dr. Prime, of the great inventor just after he had passed from the world, to which he left such a heritage, can never lose their interest:
"Morse in his coffin is a recollection never to fade. He lay like an ancient prophet or sage such as the old masters painted for Abraham, or Isaiah. His finely chiselled features, classical in their mould and majestic in repose, and heavy flowing beard; the death calm upon the brow that for eighty years had concealed a teeming brain, and that placid beauty that lingers upon the face of the righteous dead, as if the freed spirit had left a smile upon its forsaken home—these are the memories that remain of the most illustrious and honored private citizen that the New World has yet given to mankind."
IX ALONG THE BYPATHS OF HISTORY
THE WIDOW OF GEN. GAINES CLAIMS PROPERTY AT NEW ORLEANS WORTH $30,000,000—HER SUCCESS AFTER MUCH LITIGATION—THE WIDOW OF JOHN H. EATON, SECRETARY OF WAR—A CLOUD ON HER REPUTATION—HER HUSBAND A FRIEND OF GEN. JACKSON—A DUEL BETWEEN RANDOLPH AND CLAY—HOSTILITY OF THE LEADERS OF WASHINGTON SOCIETY TO MRS. EATON—SECRETARY EATON DISLIKED BY HIS COLLEAGUES—CONSEQUENT DISRUPTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET—MRS. EATON'S POVERTY IN HER OLD AGE.
Nearly a third of a century ago, as the guest in a Washington house, I had the opportunity of meeting Mrs. Gaines, the widow of General Edmund P. Gaines, a distinguished officer of the War of 1812, and Mrs. Eaton, the widow of the Hon. John H. Eaton of Tennessee, for a number of years a Senator from that State, and later Secretary of War during the administration of President Jackson. Their names suggested interesting events in our history, I gladly availed myself of the invitation to meet them.
I found Mrs. Gaines an old lady of small stature, with a profusion of curls, and gifted with rare powers of conversation. She spoke freely of her great lawsuits, one of which was then pending in the Supreme Court of the United States. As I listened, I thought of the wonderful career of the little woman before me. Few names, a half-century ago, were more familiar to the reading public than that of Myra Clark Gaines. She was born in New Orleans in the early days of the century; was the daughter of Daniel Clark, who died in 1813, the owner of a large portion of the land upon which the city of New Orleans was afterwards built. She was his only heir, and soon after attaining her majority, instituted a suit, or series of suits, for the recovery of her property. After years of litigation, the seriously controverted fact of her being the lawful heir of Daniel Clark was established, and the contest, which was to wear out two generations of lawyers, began in dead earnest. The value of the property involved in the litigation then exceeded thirty millions of dollars. At the time I saw her, she had just arrived from her home in New Orleans to be present at the argument of one of her suits in the Supreme Court. She had already received nearly six millions of dollars by successful litigation, and she assured me that she intended to live one hundred years longer, if necessary, to obtain her rights, and that she expected to recover every dollar to which she was rightfully entitled. The air of confidence with which she spoke, and the pluck manifested in her every word and motion, convinced me at once that the only possible question as to her ultimate success was that of time. And so indeed it proved, for,
"When like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still,"
numerous suits, in which she had been successful in the lower courts, were still pending in the higher.