issue.  Denied, he asserted it; assailed, he defended it.  Through long years of controversy, discussion and litigation, he maintained his right.  Equable alike in success and discouragement, calm in the midst of victories, and undismayed by the number, the violence, and the power of those who sought to deprive him of the honor and the reward of his work, he manfully maintained his ground, until, by the verdict of the highest courts of his country, and of academies of science, and the practical adoption and indorsement of his system by his own and foreign nations, those wires, which were now speaking only forty miles from Washington to Baltimore, were stretched over continents and under oceans making a network to encompass and unite, in instantaneous intercourse, for business and enjoyment, all parts of the civilized world.”

It was with well-earned but modest satisfaction that he wrote to his brother Sidney on May 31:—­

“You will see by the papers how great success has attended the first efforts of the Telegraph.  That sentence of Annie Ellsworth’s was divinely indited, for it is in my thoughts day and night.  ‘What hath God wrought!’ It is his work, and He alone could have carried me thus far through all my trials and enabled me to triumph over the obstacles, physical and moral, which opposed me.

“‘Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name, O Lord, be all the praise.’

“I begin to fear now the effects of public favor, lest it should kindle that pride of heart and self-sufficiency which dwells in my own as well as in others’ breasts, and which, alas! is so ready to be inflamed by the slightest spark of praise.  I do indeed feel gratified, and it is right I should rejoice, but I rejoice with fear, and I desire that a sense of dependence upon and increased obligation to the Giver of every good and perfect gift may keep me humble and circumspect.

“The conventions at Baltimore happened most opportunely for the display of the powers of the Telegraph, especially as it was the means of correspondence, in one instance, between the Democratic Convention and the first candidate elect for the Vice-Presidency.  The enthusiasm of the crowd before the window of the Telegraph Room in the Capitol was excited to the highest pitch at the announcement of the nomination of the Presidential candidate, and the whole of it afterwards seemed turned upon the Telegraph.  They gave the Telegraph three cheers, and I was called to make my appearance at the window when three cheers were given to me by some hundreds present, composed mainly of members of Congress.

“Such is the feeling in Congress that many tell me they are ready to grant anything.  Even the most inveterate opposers have changed to admirers, and one of them, Hon. Cave Johnson, who ridiculed my system last session by associating it with the tricks of animal magnetism, came to me and said:  ‘Sir, I give in.  It is an astonishing invention.’