The Telegraph in American and Morse Memorial (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Telegraph in American and Morse Memorial

IX years ago, urged thereto by several gentlemen connected with the early development of the American telegraph system, the telegraph IN america was published. It was a large and costly volume, and the fruit of much labor. Its reception was hearty, and the Press spoke kindly of it, although it laid no claim to literary excellence or to exhaustive treat ment. It was a work of love, very personal, - the seizing of an opportunity to perpetuate the memory of men who had rendered a great service to mankind, and to magnify and record the early history of a great invention by a grand natured man, who had honored the author with his friendship. The book met with a ready sale, and in a few months was out of print. Inasmuch as it was purchased, it may have been valued.

Since that time many changes have occurred. New men have become prominent, andthe use of the telegraph has marvellously widened. Some of its promoters, like its inventor, are dead, and others have become venerable. Meanwhile, with ever increasing power. The telegraph has become not only the master of commerce, but the tongue of mankind. In all American cities the air is webbed with Wires, and iron footed men still climb through garret windows and up on pole t0ps at early dawn to string new electrical integuments across the chimney pots of the sleeping cities. And now it is determined to take the lightning from its native sky and bury it beside the odorous sewers under the causeway, there to flash its fires beneath man's dominating foot. In all this there is an interest, familiar, strong, absorbing, and which attaches even to the men engaged in it. For this reason the second edition of the telegraph IN america is issued. It contains much new matter. Like the first, it lays no claim to literary excellence. It is a memorial book, in preparing which the heart has done more than the head. Such as it is, the writer presents it as his last token of regard for the great brotherhood of which he was one of the first born, but who now cover the earth. That is all.

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