love for the old ways, and travelled from place to place in their handsome, if lumbering, private coaches, looking upon the locomotive as a thing to be as much despised as feared.

But the public service felt the change at once. People saw that the day had gone by when a New York merchant, in order to reach Philadelphia, would have no choice between a journey by sea and the tedious stage route which it took two days to accomplish. Some of the oldest railroads in the United States were completed by 1835, and railroads soon became commonplace affairs.

When the Western States had grown to such importance that rapid communication between the East and the West had become a necessity, the public saw that a railroad reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific would be the only thing that would solve the problem. At first the objections seemed so great that it was feared such a plan could not be carried out; but as time went on it was seen that civil engineering had advanced so that it could accomplish almost anything.

Great rivers, lofty mountains, dangerous chasms and ravines, and deep, rocky canyons were all overcome by skillful engineering. Finally, in 1869, the Pacific Railroad was opened to the world, and New York and San Francisco were brought within a week's distance of each other.

The completion of this road marked one of the most important eras in the history of the United States. Previous to this, much of the trade from the West had had to find its way around Cape Horn, and the loss of time was incalculable. But the Pacific Railroad changed all this, and has been a source of immense wealth to the whole country. The West has grown wealthy and populous since its completion, and the East has profited by it in no less degree.

The two oceans no longer seem far apart, when flowers cut

on the Pacific slopes have not yet faded on reaching New York. These two great cities of the coast, the one looking toward the eastern sea and the other toward the sunsetting, though thousands of miles apart, are yet bound together by common interests, and their friendship forever assured, by those connecting links which in so short a time have joined the whole world together in bonds of peaceful union.

THE TRAIN

C. H. CRANDALL

Hark!

It comes!

It hums!

With ear to ground
I catch the sound,
The warning courier-roar

That runs along before.

The pulsing, struggling, now is clearer!
The hillsides echo "Nearer, nearer,"

Till like a drove of rushing, frightened cattle,
With dust and wind and clang and shriek and rattle,
Passes the cyclops of the train!

I see a fair face at a pane,
Like a piano string

The rails, unburdened, sing;

The white smoke flies

Up to the skies;

The sound

Is drowned

Hark!

SENDING MESSAGES BY ELECTRICITY

JOHN T. FARIS

I. The Telegraph

In 1832 a young man named Samuel F. B. Morse was returning on the ship Sully from Europe, where he had been studying art, to which he had planned to devote his life. But his thoughts were turned in a different direction by what seemed to be an accident. A chance conversation about the mysteries of electricity led him to wonder if words might not be sent by electricity. Before the voyage was over he had thought out a system of signs.

To the captain of the ship he remarked one day, "Well, if you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember that the discovery was made on board the good ship Sully."

As soon as he landed he began to make experiments. Many times he was forced to turn from these while he earned money for expenses by working as an artist. In 1835 he set up his first rude apparatus. He cooked, ate, and slept in the room with his model, not only because he was poor, but because he wanted to give every possible moment to his invention.

For years he worked, trying first one plan and then another, and then beginning all over again. Friends told him he would never succeed, but he answered: "If I can succeed in working a magnet ten miles, I can go around the globe."

One of his students, who witnessed an early experiment with the telegraph, described, in the following words, the primitive appliances used:

"I can see now that rude instrument constructed with an old stretching frame, a wooden clock, a home-made battery, and the wire stretched many times round the walls of the studio. With eager interest we gathered about it, as our master explained its operation, while with a click, click, click, the pencil, by a succession of dots and lines, recorded the message in cipher. The idea we knew, but we had little faith. To us it seemed a dream of enthusiasm. We grieved to see the sketch on the canvas untouched.”

When the invention was perfected, it was patented and Congress was requested to appropriate thirty thousand dollars for the construction of a trial line. But there was

vexatious delay. In 1842 Morse wrote:

"I have not a cent in the world. I am crushed for want of means. . . . I fear all will fail because I am too poor to risk the trifling expenses which my journey to and residence in Washington will cost me. . Nothing but the consciousness that I have an invention which is to mark an era in human civilization, and which is to contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it."

In spite of poverty, further experiments were made, one of these resulting in a test of the first submarine telegraph, a line two miles long being laid in New York harbor, another resulting in the knowledge that several currents of electricity could pass on the same wire at the same time.

Finally, on February 27, 1843, by the narrow margin of 89 to 83, the appropriation of thirty thousand dollars for a trial line passed the House of Representatives. But it seemed certain that the Senate would not concur. Two hours before the close of the session the inventor went home disheartened.

He passed a sleepless night, thinking of the thirty-seven and a half cents he would have when he reached New York, a disappointed man. Early in the morning, however, he had a call from Miss Annie Ellsworth, daughter of the Commissioner of Patents, who brought word that the bill was the last passed at the session. The gratified inventor promised her that she should send the first message over the trial line from Baltimore to Washington. When, a year later, the line was ready for operation, she sent the historic message, transmitted by the inventor, "What hath God wrought?" A few days later, when Silas Wright was nominated for Vice President by the Democratic Convention in session at Baltimore, word was telegraphed to Mr. Wright in Washington, who at once wired his answer, declining the nomination. The convention would not believe that a message had so soon been sent and the response correctly received, till a delegation was sent all the way to Washington to learn the truth.

The trial line was opened for business in 1845, the price for messages being a cent for four letters. Within six months the Magnetic Telegraph Company constructed a line from Philadelphia to Norristown, a distance of seventeen miles, and in June, 1846, this was continued to Baltimore.

Years passed before capitalists were ready to invest large amounts in new lines. It was difficult to convince them that the invention was practical. Gradually, however, traffic increased. Messages that began with "Dear Sir," and closed with "Yours truly" gave way to more concise communications. By 1852 the telegraph had won its place.

In 1853 there were twenty-five thousand miles of wire in America. To-day there are in operation in the United States more than a million and half miles of lines.