NOVEMBER 28, 1867—JUNE 10, 1871
Goes to Dresden.—Trials financial and personal.—Humorous letter to E.S. Sanford.—Berlin.—The telegraph in the war of 1866.—Paris.—Returns to America.—Death of his brother Richard.—Banquet in New York.—Addresses of Chief Justice Chase, Morse, and Daniel Huntington,—Report as Commissioner finished.—Professor W.P. Blake's letter urging recognition of Professor Henry.—Morse complies.—Henry refuses to be reconciled.— Reading by sound.—Morse breaks his leg.—Deaths of Amos Kendall and George Wood.—Statue in Central Park.—Addresses Of Governor Hoffman and William Cullen Bryant.—Ceremonies at Academy of Music.—Morse bids farewell to his children of the telegraph.
It will not be necessary to record in detail the happenings of the remainder of this last visit to Europe. Three months were spent in Dresden, with his children and his sister-in-law's family around him. The same honors were paid to him here as elsewhere on the continent. He was received in special audience by the King and Queen of Saxony, and men of note in the scientific world eagerly sought his counsel and advice. But, apart from so much that was gratifying to him, he was just then called upon to bear many trials and afflictions of various kinds and degrees, and it is marvellous, in reading his letters, to note with what great serenity and Christian fortitude, yet withal, with what solicitude, he endeavored to bear his cross and solve his problems. As he advanced in years an increasing number of those near and dear to him were taken from him by death, and his letters of Christian sympathy fill many pages of the letter books. There were trials of a domestic nature, too intimate to be revealed, which caused him deep sorrow, but which he bravely and optimistically strove to meet. Clouds, too, obscured his financial horizon; investments in certain mining ventures, entered into with high hopes, turned out a dead loss; the repayment of loans, cheerfully made to friends and relatives, was either delayed or entirely defaulted; and, to cap the climax, the Western Union Telegraph Company, in which most of his fortune was invested, passed one dividend and threatened to pass another. He had provided for this contingency by a deposit of surplus funds before his departure for Europe, but he was fearful of the future.
In spite of all this he could not refrain from treating the matter lightly and humorously in a letter to Mr. E.S. Sanford of November 28, 1867, written from Dresden: "Your letter gave me both pleasure and pain. I was glad to hear some particulars of the condition of my 'basket,' but was pained to learn that the hens' eggs instead of swelling to goose eggs, and even to ostrich eggs (as some that laid them so enthusiastically anticipated when they were so closely packed), have shrunk to pigeons' eggs, if not to the diminutive sparrows'. To keep up the figure, I am thankful there are any left not addled."
He was all the time absorbed in the preparation of his report as Commissioner to the Paris Exposition, and it was, of course, a source of great gratification to him to learn from the answers to his questions sent to the telegraph officers of the whole world, that the Morse system was practically the only one in general use. As one of his correspondents put it—"The cry is, 'Give us the Morse.'"
The necessity for the completion of this work, and his desire to give his children every advantage of study, kept him longer in Europe than he had expected, and he writes to his brother Sidney on December 1, 1867: "I long to return, for age creeps on apace, and I wish to put my house in order for a longer and better journey to a better home."
In the early part of February, 1868, he and his wife and daughter and youngest son left Dresden for Paris, stopping, however, a few days in Berlin. Mr. George Bancroft was our minister at the Prussian court, and he did all that courtesy could suggest to make the stay of his distinguished countryman a pleasant one. He urged him to stay longer, so that he might have the pleasure of presenting him at court, but this honor Morse felt obliged to decline. The inventor did, however, find time to visit the government telegraph office, of which Colonel (afterwards General) von Chauvin was the head, and here he received an ovation from all the operators, several hundred in number, who were seated at their instruments in what was then the largest operating-room in the world.
Another incident of his visit to Berlin I shall give in the words of Mr.
Prime:—
"Not to recount the many tributes of esteem and respect paid him by Dr. Siemens, and other gentlemen eminent in the specialty of telegraphy, one other unexpected compliment may be mentioned. The Professor was presented to the accomplished General Director of the Posts of the North German Bund, Privy Councillor von Phillipsborn, in whose department the telegraph had been comprised before Prussia became so great and the centre of a powerful confederation.
"At the time of their visit the Director was so engaged, and that, too, in another part of the Post-Amt, that the porter said it was useless to trouble him with the cards. The names had not been long sent up, however, before the Director himself came hurriedly down the corridor into the antechamber, and, scarcely waiting for the hastiest of introductions, enthusiastically grasped both the Professor's hands in his own, asking whether he had 'the honor of speaking to Dr. Morse,' or, as he pronounced it 'Morzey.'