been made much clearer. As it is, however, from his own accounts at a
later date, and from the depositions of the captain of the ship and some
of the passengers, the story can be told.

The voyage was, on the whole, I believe, a pleasant one and the company
in the cabin congenial. One night at the dinner-table the conversation
chanced upon the subject of electro-magnetism, and Dr. Jackson described
some of the more recent discoveries of European scientists--the length of
wire in the coil of a magnet, the fact that electricity passed
instantaneously through any known length of wire, and that its presence
could be observed at any part of the line by breaking the circuit. Morse
was, naturally, much interested and it was then that the inspiration,
which had lain dormant in his brain for many years, suddenly came to him,
and he said: "If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any
part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be
transmitted instantaneously by electricity."

The company was not startled by this remark; they soon turned to other
subjects and thought no more of it. Little did they realize that this
exclamation of Morse's was to mark an epoch in civilization; that it was
the germ of one of the greatest inventions of any age, an invention which
not only revolutionized the methods by which intelligence was conveyed
from place to place, but paved the way for the subjugation, to the uses
of man in many other ways, of that mysterious fluid, electricity, which
up to this time had remained but a plaything of the laboratory. In short,
it ushered in the Age of Electricity. Least of all, perhaps, did that Dr.
Jackson, who afterwards claimed to have given Morse all his ideas,
apprehend the tremendous importance of that chance remark. The fixed idea
had, however, taken root in Morse's brain and obsessed him. He withdrew
from the cabin and paced the deck, revolving in his mind the various