Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II by Samuel F. B. (Samuel Finley Breese) Morse
page 300 of 596 (50%)
page 300 of 596 (50%)
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that I have not long since written to you to know your personal welfare.
I hear of you often, it is true, through the papers. They praise you, as usual, for it is praise to have the abuse of such as abuse you. In all your libel suits against these degraded wretches I sympathize entirely with you, and there are thousands who now thank you in their hearts for the moral courage you display in bringing these licentious scamps to a knowledge of their duty. Be assured the good sense, the intelligence, the right feeling of the community at large are with you. The licentiousness of the press needed the rebuke which you have given it, and it feels it too despite its awkward attempts to brave it out. "I will say nothing of your 'Home as Found.' I will use the frankness to say that I wish you had not written it.... When in Paris last I several times passed 59 Rue St. Dominique. The gate stood invitingly open and I looked in, but did not see my old friends although everything else was present. I felt as one might suppose another to feel on rising from his grave after a lapse of a century." An attack from another and an old quarter is referred to in a letter to his brother Sidney of July 10, also another instance of the unfairness of the press:-- "Dr. Jackson had the audacity to appear at Louisville by _affidavit_ against me. My _counter-affidavit_, with his original letters, contradicting _in toto_ his statement, put him _hors de combat_. Mr. Kendall says he was 'completely used up.' ... I have got a copy of Jackson's affidavit which I should like to show you. There never was a more finished specimen of wholesale lying than is contained in it. He is certainly a monomaniac; no other conclusion could save him from an indictment for perjury. |
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