two wires."

On the 11th of May he again cautions Vail about his writing: "Everything
worked well yesterday, but there is one defect in your writing. Make a
_longer_ space between each letter and a still longer space between each
word. I shall have a great crowd to-day and wish all things to go off
well. Many M.C.s will be present, perhaps Mr. Clay. Give me news by the
cars. When the cars come along, try and get a newspaper from Philadelphia
or New York and give items of intelligence. The arrival of the cars at
the Junction begins to excite here the greatest interest, and both
morning and evening I have had my room thronged."

And now at last the supreme moment had arrived. The line from Washington
to Baltimore was completed, and on the 24th day of May, 1844, the company
invited by the inventor assembled in the chamber of the United States
Supreme Court to witness his triumph. True to his promise to Miss Annie
Ellsworth, he had asked her to indite the first public message which
should be flashed over the completed line, and she, in consultation with
her good mother, chose the now historic words from the 23d verse of the
23d chapter of Numbers--"What hath God wrought!" The whole verse reads:
"Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any
divination, against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of
Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" To Morse, with his strong
religious bent and his belief that he was but a chosen vessel, every word
in this verse seemed singularly appropriate. Calmly he seated himself at
the instrument and ticked off the inspired words in the dots and dashes
of the Morse alphabet. Alfred Vail, at the other end of the line in
Baltimore, received the message without an error, and immediately flashed
it back again, and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph was no longer the wild
dream of a visionary, but an accomplished fact.