Payment of dividends delayed.--Concern for welfare of his country.--
Indignation at corrupt proposal from California.--Kendall hampered by the
Vails.--Proposition by capitalists to purchase patent rights.--Cyrus W.
Field.--Newfoundland Electric Telegraph Company.--Suggestion of Atlantic
Cable.--Hopes thereby to eliminate war.--Trip to Newfoundland.--Temporary
failure.--F.O.J. Smith continues to give trouble.--Financial conditions
improve.--Morse and his wife sail for Europe.--Fêted in London.--
Experiments with Dr. Whitehouse.--Mr. Brett.--Dr. O'Shaughnessy and the
telegraph in India.--Mr. Cooke.--Charles R. Leslie.--Paris.--Hamburg.--
Copenhagen.--Presentation to king.--Thorwaldsen Museum.--Oersted's
daughter.--St. Petersburg.--Presentation to Czar at Peterhoff


CHAPTER XXXVI

AUGUST 23, 1856--SEPTEMBER 15, 1858

Berlin.--Baron von Humboldt.--London, successful cable experiments with
Whitehouse and Bright.--Banquet at Albion Tavern.--Flattering speech of
W. F. Cooke.--Returns to America.--Troubles multiply.--Letter to the
Honorable John Y. Mason on political matters.--Kendall urges severing of
connection with cable company.--Morse, nevertheless, decides to
continue.--Appointed electrician of company.--Sails on U.S.S. Niagara.--
Letter from Paris on the crinoline.--Expedition sails from Liverpool.--
Queenstown harbor.--Accident to his leg.--Valencia.--Laying of cable
begun.--Anxieties.--Three successful days.--Cable breaks.--Failure.--
Returns to America.--Retires from cable enterprise.--Predicts in 1858
failure of apparently successful laying of cable.--Sidney E. Morse.--The
Hare and the Tortoise.--European testimonial: considered niggardly by