Morse immediately dropped everything and hastened to Boston to pay the
last tributes of respect to him whom he regarded as his best friend. He
obtained as a memento one of the brushes, still wet with paint, which
Allston was using on his last unfinished work, "The Feast of Belshazzar,"
when he was suddenly stricken. This brush he afterwards presented to the
National Academy of Design, where it is, I believe, still preserved.

Sorrowfully he returned to his work in Washington, but with the
comforting thought that his friend had lived to see his triumph, the
justification for his deserting that art which had been the bond to first
bring them together.

On July 24, in his report to the Secretary of the Treasury, he says:--

"I have also the gratification to report that the contract for the wire
has been faithfully fulfilled on the part of Aaron Benedict, the
contractor; that the first covering with cotton and two varnishings of
the whole one hundred and sixty miles is also completed; that experiments
made upon forty-three miles have resulted in the most satisfactory
manner, and that the whole work is proceeding with every prospect of a
successful issue."

It was at first thought necessary to insulate the whole length of the
wire, and it was not until some time afterwards that it was discovered
that naked wires could be successfully employed.

On August 10, in his report to the Secretary, he indulges in a prophecy
which must have seemed in the highest degree visionary in those early
days:--