his Government, and when it was proposed to decorate him for his trouble
and lucid explanation, he modestly and generously disclaimed any honor,
and begged that any such recognition should be given to the inventor
himself. Other decorations and degrees were bestowed upon the inventor
from time to time, but these will be summarized in a future chapter. I
have enlarged upon this one as being the first to be received from a
foreign monarch.

As his fame increased, requests of all sorts poured in on him, and it is
amazing to find how courteously he answered even the most fantastic,
overwhelmed as he was by his duties in connection with the attacks on his
purse and his reputation. Two of his answers to correspondents are here
given as examples:--

January 17, 1849.

Gentlemen,--I have received your polite invitation to the Printers'
Festival in honor of Franklin, on his birthday the 17th of the present
month, and regret that my engagements in the city put it out of my power
to be present.

I thank you kindly for the flattering notice you are pleased to take of
me in connection with the telegraph, and made peculiarly grateful at the
present time as coming from a class of society with whom are my earliest
pleasurable associations. I may be allowed, perhaps, to say that in my
boyhood it was my delight, during my vacations, to seek my pastime in the
operations of the printing-office. I solicited of my father to take the
corrected proofs of his Geography to the printing-office, and there,
through the day for weeks, I made myself practically acquainted with all
the operations of the printer. At 9 years of age I compiled a small