"Grief has my blood and spirits drunk, My tears do like the night-dew fall; Her And all my draughts are dashed with gall;" but that "godly sorrow that worketh repentance unto life." The great mysterious change soon followed-a change that makes and marks the greatest epoch in the whole history of an immortal spirit-a change on which inspired pens exhaust the boldest figures that the world supplies. It is a change from darkness to light. It is a new birth, a resurrection from the dead, a new creation. In a word, it is an inward change, such as the calm Paley said “a man can no more forget than he can forget an escape from a shipwreck." We like the direct Christian words of John Wesley concerning the new experience of his once hapless sister: "Before she went hence, she was for some years a witness of that rest that remains, even here, for the people of God." Marriage is indissoluble, excepting for the sin Never did the sacred promise come to a more which is itself a vital breach of the covenant. thirsty spirit than hers: "When the poor and Differences in talents, tempers, tastes, or what- needy seek water and there is none, and their ever else may affect the happiness of the parties, tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear are no valid plea for a dissolution of the sacred them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them." contract. Severe as the law may seem to those Is not this the key that unlocks the mystery of who crave indulgence, its philosophy lies deep her doleful life? Was not this the final purat the foundations of society. Passion, bent pose of that strange providence that led her, upon having its own way, is too blind to per- sore of foot, through a waste howling wilderness ceive its wisdom, and too selfish to submit to of briers, and thorns, and fiery flints? its restraint. To many a couple a union for pious brothers, John and Charles, had but relife may be a life-union in misery; but let the cently known and sung the fullness of the "blessed law be annulled, or practically disregarded, as hope," as apostles and martyrs had sung it becaprice or discontent may require, and the mis- fore them. She listened to their earnest exchief becomes fatal to the whole family relation. hortations, and the story of their new-found exConfusion and every evil work are the inevitable perience, until a new sorrow welled up from her result. It is one evidence of the wisdom of the heart. It was no longer "the sorrow of the divine law in the case, that the misery of ill-world that worketh death," and which, accordassorted marriages is usually softened and re-ing to her own words, had nearly finished its lieved by time. Necessity obliges the parties to workmutual forbearance, and where there is mutual forbearance kindness is not far off. But time brought no alleviation to the miserable marriage of this admirable woman. She had given her hand, and as far as she could, her heart to a man who had not the first qualification for her, either mental or moral. It was Parian marble sorting with a cobble-stone; or the old fable of Pausanius turned into fact: a shipwrecked lady doomed to the embrace of a satyr. Yet when the deed had been done, her conscience sternly forbade all attempt at separation or divorce. Instead of following the example of thousands who "choose iniquity rather than affliction," she dragged on with him in disgust and despair until she dropped into the grave. For many years before she died her decayed health only added to the calamity of her marriage, imparting to her wretched life a still deeper gloom. The arrows of affliction drank up the remainder of her spirits, and the frail vessel was exhausted and dry. She had not yet asked the question, "Who shall minister to such a grief, or what hand shall apply the healing remedy?" But the time for that question had come. The best argument for the truth of religion-and we mean by the term no " dry clutter of morality," but what old Scougal called “the life of God in the soul of man"—is the need of it; the need of it at all times, but especially when every other prop breaks and falls. We knew an intelligent gentleman who was brought back from atheism by the death of his wife. The sense of desolation and grief quite overcame him. He quit the society of men and took to the fields and woods, and in the anguish of his heart he found himself instinctively praying to the God whose existence he had denied. Such, when fairly heard, is the logic of pain, and grief, and loss. It leads to the Strong for strength. Taught at last by this logic, Mrs. Wright spurned the broken staff, and turned aside from the broken and empty cistern to lean thenceforth on the everlasting rock, and drink from the living spring. And she found them both in the God of her fathers. All this, however, seems to have had no other effect upon her sullen husband than to stir his resentment. The brightest part of religion-its very joy-is hateful to a wicked mind, as the sight of the sun was despair to Milton's lost angel. Mrs. Wright complains that she had to seck religious society "by stealth;" but she added, "I have a firm persuasion and blessed hope that in the country to which I am going I shall not sing Hallelujah, and holy, holy, holy, without company, as I have done in this." At the period of her conversion her health was ruined beyond recovery. It cast a melancholy tinge over her spirit, and made her long more than ever, but with sweetest hope, for a refuge in the grave. Cold gray clouds still hung round her sky, but they were not the clouds of night, for that had forever passed away. She partook of that delicious mournful joy which characterized the spirit of her brother Charles, whom she so closely resembled in poetical talent. Some of his best hymns are indebted to this feeling for their exquisite tenderness and power to touch the heart. Like him, therefore, she sung for the rest of her days: "To take a poor fugitive in, The arms of thy mercy display, Away to the mansions above The heaven of feeling thy love." A few years, and the gate opened and the "poor fugitive" went in, as weary a spirit as ever cast its burden in the dark waters that lie before the shining city. "I have heard my father say," said Charles Wesley, "that God had shown him he should have all his nineteen children about him in heaven." Poor Hetty took her place by his side on the day of the vernal equinox in the year 1750. Let us hear the affecting words of her brother Charles: "March 5, 1750.-I prayed by my sister Wright, a gracious, tender, trembling soul; a bruised reed which the Lord will not break." March 14-I found my sister Wright very near the haven-in hope believing against hope." March 21.-I called a few minutes after her spirit had been set at liberty." A few days after her decease Charles wrote to his wife, saying: "Last Monday I followed our happy sister to her grave." Sometime between her death and burial he preached her funeral sermon, from the well-chosen words, "Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended." During the hour of the discourse, he says, "I had sweet fellowship with her." Not a doubt of it! say what ye will, ye fools and blind, ye gross earthlings, who vainly think that the grave takes all; or, which is kindred to it, that the blessed can not whisper their sympathies and loves through walls of flesh! Mrs. Wright had written her own epitaph, probably at one of the gloomiest periods of her lif, for sadder lines were never cut in marble. We close her mournful story with the words: "Destined while living to sustain An equal share of grief and pain; A broken heart can bleed no more!" We only add the appropriate words of the Psalmist: "Their soul is melted because of trouble. Then they cry unto the Lord, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven." UNDER GREEN LEAVES. UNDER Brether Paul and 1 NDER green leaves the shadows fell; Where, tinkling like a silver bell, We felt the whispering summer breeze, We parted-and the summer-time Fled panting by, with torturing haste; I heard the bells: ten Sabbaths chime, And then-the world was all a waste. The sun, that day by day was warm And he was there-my noble Paul!- And yet I could but let him go. I knew he fought a glorious fight, To die, mayhap, a glorious death; And knowing that, I felt 'twas right, And would not hold him with a breath. The end came soon-and I am here- Is all the glory he achieves. He lies beneath an alien sod; Above, the tide of war flows on: 'Tis autumn, and the mournful air Seems heavy with a thousand sighs; They flutter round me every where, And tell me that the season dies. The leaves have changed their summer hue, And now are brown, and dead, and dry; The sky above is coldly blue, The brook below runs silent by. Under green leaves I sit no moreThe world to me is dead and sere; My heart is very, very sore, As here I watch the dying year. And, oh! I know that not alone Am I in all my misery; Others shall weep and sigh with me. Under green leaves the shadows fell; We sat together-Paul and I: Thank God! there was no voice to tell "The summer leaves and thou must die." IN grave legislators. There were, however, honorable exceptions to this, and among these Hon. John P. Kennedy, of Maryland, and Hon. G. Ferris, of New York, were prominent. At this session Mr. Morse succeeded so far as to procure a report from a committee in favor of his project; but it was not until the session of 1843 that a bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars was passed in the House of Representatives, by the small majority of 89 ayes to 83 nays, to enable him to construct a line of telegraph from the capital to the city of Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles. This vote would seem to in N the winter of 1837-38, while strolling through the Capitol at Washington in company with Professor Thomas Miller, then as now one of the most eminent medical men of the metropolis, I was requested to accompany the Doctor to a committee-room in order to witness some new and interesting experiments in electro-magnetism. I had there the good fortune to meet with Mr. Morse for the first time, who, after a personal presentation, was kind enough to exhibit his method of telegraphing. The apparatus used consisted of two coils of wire, five miles each indicate a nearly equal division of opinion in the length, forming a circuit of ten miles, insulated by a covering of cotton, somewhat like ordinary bonnet-wire, connected at one end with a galvanic battery and at the other with a recording instrument of his own invention. At this period Mr. Morse had filed a caveat for a patent, and was busied in bringing his invention to the attention of the members of the two Houses of Congress, in order to secure an appropriation to enable him to test its practical application as a method of communication between places remote from each other—a task, as the sequel proved, of no little difficulty, and attended with no small degree of personal annoyance. The instantaneous communication through the whole circuit of ten miles of insulated wire, which followed the immersion of the battery, and the palpable results, which manifested themselves at the recording end of the coil, seemed to me to be almost the work of magic, and I could scarcely find words in which to express my enthusiasm. This was among the first attempts at communicating intelligence in this manner which had ever been attempted, and no reason could be seen why, after accomplishing a distance of ten miles through a coiled wire, the same might not be done through one extended over that space in a straight line; or why this could not be increased to a hundred or a thousand miles, and thus completely annihilate space in the transmission of intelligence. But in the midst of this ardor came the doubt as to the distance which the power of the battery was capable of communicating itself—a doubt which was equally shared by Mr. Morse himself, who, however, proposed to overcome the difficulty by the establishment of relays of batteries wherever they should be needed. In looking at this subject at this period, after a lapse of nearly a quarter of a century, and when the electro-magnetic telegraph has embraced within its coils nearly every part of the civilized world, it appears wonderful that there should have existed a doubt as to the propriety of Congress affording its encouragement and aid to an invention which appeared to be fraught with such practical utility. But the record of the times shows that not only did a doubt exist, but that the whole scheme, in its incipiency, was considered by many but little better than the delusions of mesmerism, and its projector an enthusiast too wild to command the attention of House as to the merits of the question; but an incident occurred in its passage which demonstrates how much the members were operated upon by a fear lest their names should be recorded as voting for a measure which might be unpopular with their constituents. While the ayes and nays were being called Mr. Morse, who was in the lobby awaiting with anxious expectation the result, was much surprised to observe that a friend who, he supposed, favored the measure voted in the negative. This friend, who shortly after approached him, remarked that he was doubtless surprised at his vote, but that he would shortly explain it. When the result was ascertained he moved its reconsid eration, which was lost by an almost unanimous nay, showing that a large majority of the House were willing to allow the passage of the bill by a viva voce vote, but were fearful when called upon to record an affirmative vote, lest it might influence unfavorably their political position with their constituents. The bill authorizing the appropriation to test the value of Morse's improvement was, under the operation of the previous question, passed on the 23d of February, without discussion; but a few days before, when under the motion of Mr. Kennedy it was brought to the attention of the House, members were not wanting who were willing to cover the whole scheme with ridicule, as impracticable and Utopian. Among the motions of this kind was one offered by Hon. Cave Johnson, of Tennessee, proposing "that one half of the appropriation should be given to try mesmeric experiments." Against obstacles of this character, which would have induced most men to abandon the hope of obtaining aid from the Government in despair, Mr. Morse steadily and perseveringly labored until his application was crowned with success. But there was an opposition of another character, not so easily comprehended nor so speedily overcome. This arose from a personal prejudice entertained by some members against the recipient of the favors granted by the bill, among which class was the venerable ex-President, John Quincy Adams, at that time a member of the House. This was the more singular, as the personal relations between Morse and himself were apparently of a friendly character, and certainly contained no germ of ill-feeling on the part of Mr. Morse. It doubtless had its origin in a newspaper attack made, some years pre-inated, seemed to render it doubtful whether vious, upon Mr. Adams for employing foreign the bill could be reached in time for the action instead of native artists, attributed, but without of the Senate. This apprehension increased as foundation, to Mr. Morse. The facts of the case time wore on, until at last the 3d of March arare these: rived, and the bill in numerical order stood far down on the calendar. Mr. Morse, who had watched with nervous trepidation the slow progress of legislation in the Senate, at this juncture requested an interview with Mr. Huntington, Senator from Connecticut, for the purpose of ascertaining what possible chance of success remained. Mr. Huntington, who was not only a sincere friend of Mr. Morse, but favored the bill, assured him that it then stood one hundred and nineteen from the one before the Senate-all of which would have to be acted upon before his own came up for consideration, under the rule that no bill could be taken from its regular order. This intelligence seemed disheartening enough; but a ray of hope was presented by the Senator in the assurance that if no bill called out much discussion it might still be reached. During the entire day Mr. Morse watched the course of legislation from the gallery with an anxiety probably shared by few of the eager expectants who, from their places in the gallery above, hung with anxious solicitude upon the action of the measures in which they were especially interested upon the floor of the Senate. At length, worn out by the interminable discussion of some Senator who seemed to be speaking against time, and overcome by his prolonged watching, he left the gallery at a late hour and returned to his lodgings, under the belief that it was not possible his bill could be reached, and that he must again turn his attention to those labors of the brush and easel by means of which he might be enabled to prosecute appeals to Congress at a future time. In building the Capitol eight spacious niches were left in the Rotunda, intended to be filled with paintings illustrative of national events. Four had already been occupied by paintings executed by Trumbull; and native artists crowded eagerly forward to enter the lists as competitors for the vacant ones, as the highest goal of their ambition; among the rest Mr. Morse, who had acquired a prominent position as a painter, presented himself among the applicants. At this stage Mr. Adams moved that the competition should be extended to foreign artists, declaring that the country possessed none of sufficient ability properly to execute the desired paintings. Mr. Morse was first apprised of this motion by Fenimore Cooper, who called upon him at his rooms in the University of New York, and read the criticism which was supposed to have excited the ire of the "old man eloquent," and which appeared in the Evening Post of the same day. It was universally attributed to Mr. Morse, whose denial of its authorship was supposed to arise from modesty; and, consequently, the more strongly he protested the more he was believed to be the author. Be this as it may, it resulted in Mr. Adams casting out his name from the list of applicants in committee; and he consequently lost the opportunity, for which he had so eagerly sought, of perpetuating his name by his artistic work upon the walls of the Capitol. How little did he then dream that a fame more lasting and wide-spread than any he could ever hope to attain by the pencil speedily awaited him! Nor did Mr. Adams forget his early prejudices when, years He accordingly made his preparations to reafter, he was called upon to vote for the appro- turn to New York on the following morning, priation for the electro-telegraph experiment. and retiring to rest, sank into a profound slumDuring the excitement of the moment, when it ber, from which he did not awake until a late was manifest from the yeas and nays that the hour on the following morning. But a short vote was one of great uncertainty, an active time after, while seated at the breakfast-table, friend of the measure approached Mr. Adams, the servant announced that a lady desired to see who stood perfectly immovable amidst the ex- him. Upon entering the parlor he encountered citement, and urged him to give his vote for the Miss Annie Ellsworth, the daughter of the Commeasure; but his appeal called forth no re-missioner of Patents, whose face was all aglow sponse, and he either did not vote at all, or cast it in the negative. It would appear, from subsequent events, that the feelings of Mr. Adams underwent a great change in regard to Mr. | Morse; for, in a conversation had long after with the Rev. Dr. Gurley, on the subject of aspiration for position, he declared emphatically, "I had rather be a Fulton or a Morse than a hundred Presidents!" But the action of the House was but one step in the advancement of the measure. It yet required the concurrence of the Senate and the sanction of the President to become a law; and although no opposition to its passage was apprehended in the Senate, yet the brief space intervening between the 23d of February and the 3d of March, upon which day the session was term with pleasure. "I have come to congratulate you," she remarked, as he entered the room, and approached to shake hands with her. "To congratulate me!" replied Mr. Morse, "and for what?" "Why upon the passage of your bill, to be sure," she replied. "You must surely be mistaken; for I left at a late hour, and its fate seemed inevitable." "Indeed I am not mistaken," she rejoined; "father remained until the close of the session, and your bill was the very last that was acted on, and I begged permission to convey to you the news. I am so happy that I am the first to tell you." The feelings of Mr. Morse may be better im Vice-President." A third dispatch was sent, in which he was still further urged to accept the nomination. To which he replied: agined than described. He grasped his young | Mr. Polk cheerfully, but can not accept the nomination of companion warmly by the hand, and thanked her over and over again for this joyful intelligence. "As a reward," concluded he, "for being the first bearer of this news, you shall send over the telegraph the first message it conveys." "I will hold you to that promise," replied "Remember." she. 66 'Remember," responded Mr. Morse; and they parted. The plans of Mr. Morse were now altogether changed. His journey homeward was abandoned, and he set to work to carry out the project of establishing the line of electro-telegraph, between Washington and Baltimore, authorized by the bill. His first idea was to convey the wires, inclosed in a leaden tube, beneath the ground. He had already arranged a plan by which the wires, insulated by a covering of cotton saturated in gum shellac, were to be inserted into leaden pipes in the process of casting. But after the expenditure of several thousand dollars, and much delay, this plan was abandoned, and the one now in use, of extending them on poles, adopted. The season, however, had so far progressed that it was found impossible to complete the undertaking that year, and it was delayed until the following spring. "Under no circumstances can Mr. Wright accept the nomination. He thanks the Convention, and refers to his two former answers." A fourth dispatch was sent, urging him to reconsider his decision, and informing him that a committee would visit Washington to confer with him. Mr. Wright's reply was as follows: "Mr. Wright has well considered, and begs that his previous answers may be satisfactory." The originals of these messages, in the handwriting of Mr. Wright, which were transmitted by Mr. Morse himself, are carefully preserved by him, not only as a pleasant reminiscence of his early days of telegraphing, but likewise as mementos of one of the purest and ablest statesmen of his time. Mr. Wright had used his influence with the Convention to secure the nomination of Mr. Van Buren for the Presidency, but without success; and it is supposed that his steadfast declension of the office of Vice-President, tendered to him under such flattering circumstances, and urged by a delegation from the Convention, was due to the circumstance that he feared he might be suspected of relaxing his efforts in favor of the candidate whom he had undertaken to sustain, in order that he might reap a reward in the bestowal of a distinguished By the month of May, 1844, the whole line was laid, and magnets and recording instruments were attached to the ends of the wires at Mount Clare Dépôt, Baltimore, and at the Supreme Court Chamber, in the Capitol at Wash-office in his own person. ington. When the circuit was complete, and The appropriation for the establishment of the signal at the one end of the line was respond- the line, notwithstanding the untoward events ed to by the operator at the other, Mr. Morse which always attend new undertakings, and call sent a messenger to Miss Ellsworth to inform her for expenditures which subsequent information that the telegraph awaited her message. She show to be useless, was more than sufficient to speedily responded to this, and sent for trans- pay the expenses incurred. The sum which remission the following, which was the first formal mained, amounting to several thousand dollars, dispatch ever sent through a telegraphic wire was, at the suggestion of the inventor, expended connecting remote places with each other: in maintaining the line in operation until it should have gained a sufficient stability to sustain itself. In February, 1845, a bill was introduced into Congress to appropriate $8000 for the further maintenance of the telegraph established between Baltimore and Washington, the funds "WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!" The original of the message is now in the archives of the Historical Society at Hartford, Connecticut. being sufficient to defray the expense, which was passed at this session, and appropriated to its further continuance. Shortly after the completion of the line from Washington to Baltimore the Democratic Con-received from the transmission of messages not vention which nominated Mr. Polk as President, and Mr. Dallas as Vice-President, assembled at Baltimore, and the results of the various ballots by which Mr. Van Buren was defeated and Mr. Polk selected were rapidly communicated by telegraph. When the question of the nomination of Vice-President arose the New York delegation transmitted to Silas Wright, Senator from New York, a dispatch asking to be allowed to use his name as a candidate, and assuring him of success. To this dispatch he replied as follows: Mr. Morse now renewed his application to the Government to become the sole possessor of the telegraphs in the United States, which was declined. Mr. Cave Johnson, who had in the mean time become Postmaster-General, in his report declined to burden that department with the telegraph enterprise on the ground that, however beneficial it might be as a private enterprise, and however advantageous to the Government in the rapid transmission of intelligence, yet it could never become a paying concern, and must necessarily be sustained by a large outlay, with which he was unwilling to burden the Treasury. The effect of this an"Mr. Wright is here. Will support the nomination of nouncement upon capitalists was truly disheart "Mr. Wright requests the New York delegation to say that he can not accept the nomination of Vice-President." In reply to this dispatch a second was sent, asking if he was at the office, and to review his decision. To this Mr. Wright replied: |