He came down to breakfast the next morning with a very sad face, hardly knowing how he was to pay his board and get home. He was met by a young lady, Miss Annie Ellsworth, who came to him with a smile.
"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Morse," she said.
"For what, my dear friend?"
"For the passage of your bill."
"What!" he said, in great astonishment; "the passage of my bill?"
"Yes; do you not know of it?"
"No; it cannot be true!"
"You came home too early last night, Mr. Morse. Your bill has passed, and I am happy to be the first to bring you the good news."
"You give me new life, Miss Ellsworth," he said. "For your good news I promise you this: when my telegraph line is laid, you shall have the honor of selecting the first message to be sent over it."
Congress had granted only thirty thousand dollars. It was not much, but Morse went actively to work. He wanted to dig a ditch to lay his pipe in, through which the wire was to run. He got another inventor to help him, Ezra Cornell, who afterwards founded Cornell University. Mr. Cornell invented a machine which dug the ditch at a great rate, laid the pipe, and covered it in. In five minutes it laid and covered one hundred feet of pipe.