An incident soon occurred which brought the telegraph into notoriety. Three days after the transmission of the first message the National Democratic Convention, then sitting in Baltimore, nominated James K. Polk as president; and as vice-president Silas Wright, who was at that time in the Senate at Washington. Mr. Vail sent the news of the nomination by telegraph from Baltimore to Professor Morse, and he communicated it to Mr. Wright, who immediately declined the nomination. The rapidity with which the messages had passed between Baltimore and Washington surprised the Convention, who are said to have been so incredulous on the subject that they sent a Committee to Washington to confer with Mr. Wright, and adjourned till the desired confirmation was received. The incident caused a sensation. The telegraph became the latest “wonder.” Professor Morse’s long winter of despondency and anxious struggle seemed now to be made glorious summer. The hill of difficulty appeared to have been surmounted. His invention answered expectations, and the experimental line worked well. Now his buoyancy seemed to rise to poetic flights; for in March, 1845, he wrote that while travelling on the Rhine some years previously he saw on a sundial at Worms the motto Horas non numero nisi serenas; the beauty of its sentiment appeared to him to be so well sustained in the euphony of its syllables that he placed it in his note-book, and he now ventured to expand it into the following stanzas which he dedicated “To my young friend A——, sincerely praying that the dial of her life may ever show unclouded hours.”
TO MISS A. G. E.
THE SUNDIAL.
Horas non numero nisi serenas.
I note not the hours except they be bright.
The sun when it shines in a clear, cloudless sky
Marks the time of my disc in figures of light.
If clouds gather o’er me, unheeded they fly,
I note not the hours except they be bright.
So when I review all the scenes that have passed