The now despairing inventor clung to his post in the gallery almost to
the end, but, being assured by his senatorial friends that there was no
possibility of the bill being reached, and unable to bear the final blow
of hearing the gavel fall which should signalize his defeat, shrinking
from the well-meant condolences of his friends, he returned almost
broken-hearted to his room.

The future must have looked black indeed. He had staked his all and lost,
and he was resolved to abandon all further efforts to press his invention
on an unfeeling and a thankless world. He must pick up his brush again;
he must again woo the fickle goddess of art, who had deserted him before,
and who would, in all probability, be chary of her favors now. In that
dark hour it would not have been strange if his trust in God had wavered,
if he had doubted the goodness of that Providence to whose mysterious
workings he had always submissively bowed. But his faith seems to have
risen triumphant even under this crushing stroke, for he thus describes
the events of that fateful night, and of the next morning, in a letter to
Bishop Stevens, of Pennsylvania, written many years later:--

"The last days of the last session of that Congress were about to close.
A bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars for my purpose had passed
the House, and was before the Senate for concurrence. On the last day of
the session [3d of March, 1843] I had spent the whole day and part of the
evening in the Senate chamber, anxiously watching, the progress of the
passing of the various bills, of which there were, in the morning of that
day, over one hundred and forty to be acted upon before the one in which
I was interested would be reached; and a resolution had a few days before
been passed to proceed with the bills on the calendar in their regular
order, forbidding any bill to be taken up out of its regular place.