The Child's Book of American Biography by Mary Stoyell Stimpson (10 best books of all time TXT) 📕

and artists, it was Samuel who was able to answer them. When he was fourteen, he wrote a life of a noted Greek scholar. It was not published, but it was very good. He also painted pictures in water colors of his home and portraits of all the family. These were so perfect that every one said he should go to Europe and study with the famous Benjamin West. Finally his parents agreed that this was the right thing for him to do, but they said he would have to live very simply, because the Morses were not rich.

Samuel did not mind working hard, eating little, or dressing shabbily, if he could just study with a fine teacher. West noticed how willing Samuel was to do his pictures over and over again, so he took much pains with him. Samuel won several prizes and medals, and his pictures were talked of everywhere.

Morse came back to Boston when he was twenty-four, poor and threadbare, but famous. People flocked to see his pictures but did not buy them. So he went to New York to try his luck in that city. From a little boy he had liked to try experiments with magnets and electricity, so he often went to lectures on electricity and thought about different things that might be done with such a force, if only people could learn how to use it. These lecturers that he heard often made the remark: "If only electricity could be made to write!"

This sentence kept going through Samuel's head, as he sat at his easel, painting. It stayed in his mind when he went to Europe for the second time. It followed him aboard ship when he was returning from that second trip, sad and discouraged, because a big picture on which he had spent much time and money had not sold. Poor Samuel Morse felt like crying, but he said to himself: "Well, I won't sit by myself and sulk just because I have had more hard luck. I will be sociable and talk with the other passengers." It was fortunate he did, for a group of men were telling about some experiments they had seen in Paris with a magnet and electricity. Samuel asked some questions and then began to pace the deck and think. Pretty soon he took out a notebook from his pocket and began to make marks in it. He got more and more excited as the hours went by, for he knew he had thought of something wonderful. He had invented an alphabet for sending dispatches from one part of the world to another! When it was daylight, he had written out an alphabet of dots and dashes that stood for every letter and number in the English language!

Morse expected others to be as pleased as he with his invention, but they did not even believe in it. "The idea," said they, "that a man in New York can talk with another in San Francisco!"

Of course, if people did not believe Morse's idea was right, they naturally would not give any money to try it out, so for years this man almost starved while he lived in one small room that had to serve for work-shop, bedroom, kitchen, and artist's studio, while he took pupils, did small pictures, anything, in fact, to get money for his machine and to pay for his room and food. You see he needed one beautifully made machine, and he must have a long line of poles and wires built before he could prove that with his dots and dashes people could talk to each other, although they were miles apart. And this would cost a lot of money. He sent many letters to Washington, asking Congress to help him. The men in Congress were not interested. His letters were not answered. "Poor old chap," they laughed, "he's gone crazy over his scheme!"

Finally, as no attention was paid to his letters, Mr. Morse saved up a little money and went to Washington himself. One senator agreed to ask Congress to advance him some money. But the time kept slipping by, and nothing was done.

One night when it was late, and all the senators were eager to get through with bills and business, the senator who liked Mr. Morse saw him sitting away up in the gallery, all alone. He went up to him and said: "I know your bill (or request) will not pass. Oh, do give it up and go home!"

When Mr. Morse went out of the building, he had given up all hopes of getting help. He went to his boarding-house, and when he had paid for the room and his breakfast the next morning, (he never ran in debt--for he had a horror of it!) he had just thirty-seven cents left in the world. After he had crept up the many flights of stairs, he shut the door of his small room and knelt down beside his bed. He told God that he was going to give up his invention--that perhaps it was not right for him to succeed. He had tried to do something which he thought would be a help in the world, and if he could not, he would try to be brave and sensible about it. Then, being very tired, he fell asleep like a tired child.

But the next morning--what do you think?--a young lady, the daughter of the friendly senator, came rushing into the room where Mr. Morse was eating his breakfast, and holding out both hands, said joyfully: "I've come to congratulate you. Your bill has passed!"

"It cannot be," he answered.

"Oh, it is true. My father let me be the bearer of the good news."

"Well," said Mr. Morse, trembling with delight, "you, my dear message-bearer, shall send the first message that ever goes across the wires."

It did not take long to convince the world that Professor Morse (as he was now called) had invented a fine thing. In less than a year a line was completed from Washington to Baltimore, and Miss Ellsworth, the kind senator's daughter, sent the first message ever heard over a recording telegraph.

People found it a great blessing to be able to send quick news, and Samuel Morse was soon called the greatest benefactor of the age. The man who had lived in one room and who had gone for two days at a time without food received so many invitations to banquets that he could not go to half of them. The ten powers of Europe held a special congress and sent the inventor eighty thousand dollars for a gift. The Sultan of Turkey, the King of Prussia, the Queen of Spain, the Emperor of the French, the King of Denmark, all sent decorations and presents. The name of Samuel F. B. Morse was on every lip.

But all this success did not spoil him one bit. He was the same modest, lovable man he had always been. Very few Americans have had so much honor paid to them as he. When he was an old man, the telegraph people all over the world wanted to show their esteem for him and so erected a statue to his memory in Central Park, New York. An evening reception was held in a large hall, and when Samuel Morse came upon the stage, how the audience rose and cheered! He was led to a table on which had been placed the first telegraph register ever used. In some clever way this had been joined to every telegraph wire in America and to those in foreign lands. Mr. Morse put his fingers on the keys, and after thanking his friends for their gift, spelled out, with his own dots and dashes, his farewell greeting; it was this--Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!

When Jedediah Morse wrote his geographies of the United States, he little thought the small boy Samuel, who tried so hard not to disturb him, would one day bind all the countries on the globe together!

 

WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT

George Washington was a daring soldier himself and of course noticed how other men behaved on a battlefield. He liked a man who had plenty of courage--a real hero. There was a certain Colonel Prescott who fought at the battle of Bunker Hill whom Washington admired. He always spoke of him as Prescott, the brave.

Colonel Prescott had a grandson, William Hickling Prescott, who was never in a battle in his life and did not know the least thing about soldiering, but he deserved the same title his grandfather won--"Prescott, the brave"--as you will see.

William was born in Salem, in 1796. His father, a lawyer who afterwards became a famous judge, was a rich man, so William and his younger brothers and sisters had a beautiful home; and as his mother was a laughing, joyous woman, the little Prescotts had a happy childhood.

William was much petted by his parents. His mother taught him to read and write, but when he was very small he went to school to a lady who loved her pupils so well that she never allowed people to call her a school-teacher--she said she was a school-mother. Between his pleasant study hours with Miss Higginson, this school-mother, and his merry play hours at home, the days were never quite long enough for William.

When he was seven, he was placed in a private school taught by Master Knapp. And there he was asked to study rather more than he liked. He had loved story books almost from his cradle, and what he read was very real to him. Sometimes, when he was only a tiny boy, he felt so sure the goblins, fairies, and giants of which he had been reading might suddenly appear, unless his mother were at hand to banish them, that he would follow her from room to room, holding on to her gown. Still these books were much nicer, he thought, than the ones Master Knapp told him to study. He was full of fun and frolic and took all Master Knapp's rebukes so cheerfully that the teacher could not get angry with him. His schoolmates adored him. Even if he did play a good many jokes on them, they were not mean, vicious jokes. He had altogether too kind a heart to hurt a person or to say unkind things. He did manage to get his history lessons, and he liked to read lives of great men. But he did not study any great amount until after his father moved to Boston, and William began to fit himself for Harvard College. He was proud of his father and fancied that he would like to be a lawyer like him.

[Illustration: The poor fellow fell to the floor as if he were dead.

Page 166.]

Young Prescott had been in college but a short time when, one night at dinner, a rough, rude student hurled a hard crust of bread across the table, not aiming at any one in particular. But it hit Prescott in his left eye and destroyed the sight in it. The poor fellow fell to the floor as if he were dead and was very ill for weeks. Then it was that he began