Memorial Services Held At The Capitol.

Washington, April 17, 1872.

Because we have no Westminster Abbey, or other royal sleeping place when genius passes away, we have memorial services held at the capital of the nation, under the shadow of the dome and the Goddess of Liberty. No man since the Saviour was born has ever had such obsequies follow him to the grave as the plain citizen of a Republic who has just passed away. The ceiling of the House of Representatives had been pierced, and numerous wires were seen suspended from the wall, and these ended below the Speaker’s desk, where an electric instrument was placed that transferred to those present that throb of sympathy which alone makes the world akin. The voices of seventy cities of the Union were heard speaking in the Hall of Representatives, for Professor Morse had given to each a tongue of flame. Click, click, click; from the bed of mighty waters came the sob of the Old World. London sent her condolence, dated many hours subsequent to our time. April the sixteenth was dead and gone in England, but on the wings of the lightning came the intelligence of an unborn day. From Europe, Egypt, China, flashed sympathy with this nation because a simple American citizen had gone to his eternal home. In the self-same spot where all this tribute was paid to his memory he had once stood—poor, obscure, and alone, working out the solemn problem which should revolutionize the world.

On the floor of the House of Representatives might have been seen political strength, the judicial ermine, poet, painter, scholar, and humble citizen, and from the galleries looked down the womanly element of the Republic. First of all came President Grant, with his square, immovable face. At his side walked Secretary Fish, whose comeliness will ever furnish a theme for song and story. Then came Secretary Belknap, with a presence sufficiently warm and attractive to keep the whole Cabinet from spoiling for the want of caloric; then clear-cut Secretary Boutwell. Behind the Cabinet might have been seen the ponderous Supreme Judges, and their presence proved that the Creator worked regardless of material when he constructed these excellent men. On the Speaker’s stand stood the men whose speeches were to honor the great man whose memory was to be embalmed. Speaker Blaine sat in his accustomed seat, with Vice-President Colfax at his right hand.

Speaker Blaine touched his desk with his gavel, and silence fell upon those congregated there. Then softly upon the ear sounded the silver voice of Professor Morse’s aged pastor in solemn prayer, a simple petition, such as men utter when their feet have almost reached the other shore. After the Marine Band had been heard, Sunset Cox made some remarks, and these were followed by a lengthy biography from Senator Patterson, which was altogether too long to be read when so much that was equally interesting was to follow.

Fernando Wood gave the most interesting account of the struggle and despair, but final triumph, of Professor Morse in his attempts to make the Government aid him in his undertaking. Mr. Wood is the only man in Congress who was a member of that body at the time the inventor was pleading his cause. Professor Morse first laid his plans before his own Government, and they were rejected. He then went abroad, was absent two years, going, as did Columbus, from court to court, obscure, unheard, unnoticed. All undaunted, he came home, to try for the last time to bring his wonderful discovery before the world. It was this period of his life that the Hon. Fernando Wood brought so vividly before the audience. With the mind’s eye the vast congregation could see a threadbare, dejected man traversing the streets of Washington, modestly attempting to electrify Congress with a flash of his own genius. At last, when he was slowly settling into the depths of despair, he had the supreme happiness of learning that in the very last hours of a session a modest amount had been appropriated to carry out his apparently insane undertaking.

Facing the speakers of the evening hung a portrait of the departed. It was surrounded by a white groundwork, inlaid with an inscription in green letters: “What God hath wrought.” It was the picture of a man in the winter of life, with hair and beard of snow; a face not classically made, but with fine, manly features, that must have glowed with indestructible beauty when lit up by the enthusiastic genius within.

Samuel F. B. Morse has gone the way of all the earth. He lived to know that his name had been spoken by the intellectual world from pole to pole. No more honor could be bestowed upon his ashes; and his memory is embalmed in the soul of his country.

One of the speakers of the evening said that Professor Morse was born the same year that Benjamin Franklin died, and the lives of the two men seemed like joining a broken thread. And this reminds the writer of a man who might have been seen in that audience who to-day is trying on the same field to get Congress to help him to demonstrate to the people that wires and batteries and Atlantic cables are only so much waste matter; that from given points anywhere on the world’s surface that same lightning which Franklin brought to earth with his kite can be harnessed to do his bidding. He has got his patent, his invention, and his faith. As with Morse, Congress is afraid to “establish a precedent,” and so another inventor goes begging his way, perhaps to immortal fame.

Olivia.