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Show iJust From An Accidental Word. How long it requires for some people to discover dis-cover what they can do best. Before us is a little sketch of Samuel F. B. Morse. Ho was a fine scholar, a wonderful artist; he had taken nrizes In sculpture and painting; he with other aiusts organized or-ganized the Drawing Assoclaton, which has led up to the founding pf the National Academy ot Deslpn. He was a gifted lecturer and was known as a great artist on both shores of the Atlantic. In that way he spent the first forty year3 of his life, and possibly his highest dream was that at last he would paint some masterpiece that would link his name with the few immortals of art. But crossing the Atlantic, the remark of a fellow passenger pas-senger changed the current of his life. This pas senger, Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who had been a. student in Paris, described an experiment by which electricity had been instantly transmitted H over a long length of wire. H Tho instant conclusion of Morse was if that H was true, then messages could be thus transmitted H by electricity. Frpm that hour his life was ab-H ab-H sorbed with the thought and he never rested until H tho miracle was performed. . But before his trl-H trl-H umph ho became penniless. Nearly all ins old H friends thought he had ridden his hobby bes'ond H the pale of anything practical, half of the mem-H mem-H bers of tho Congress of 1843 jeered at his preten-H preten-H tions, oven when he gave full proof of his ability to do what he claimed ho could. He began the H work when ho was forty years of age; his triumph H came when ho was fifty-two. K It was tho miracle of tho age; it has no rival H now, for tho phonograph and telephone are but younger brothers of the first immortal new voice H that had come to startle the world. The steam H engine was a wonder, but the elements involved H in it are all tangible; the telegraph was as B though the Infinite had bent to give to man a now Mercury, a Genii that could annihilate time and H space, that neither storms or land nor raging seas coma retard in its flight or cause to forget one wcra of its messages; that was to bring-the races -H of men in close communications, that was to stop H wars, to herald the world's history every day to H men. And to think that it was by a mere accident that tLe artist-inventor was, at middle age, with fame already secured in other fields, led into the work. It supplies another proof of how necessary it is for young men to try to make no mistake when they choose a calling. It is quite possible that Morse's artist temperament was a help to him in his final great study. It painted pictures of the triumph that was to be his, if he could but succeed, suc-ceed, in enchanting colors. And the care needed, the close attention to details required In painting and sculpture helped him when he came to frame an alphabet through which the new glory was to give utterance, but still it was by the merest accident acci-dent that his thoughts were turned into a path at the further end of which Immortality waited for him. Others had reached out into space and caught the subtle fluid which is the life of the universe, . the agent through which the Infinite works, it was left to Morse to coax it into his service and to be trained to do his will. |