Whitehouse and Bright.--Banquet at Albion Tavern.--Flattering speech of
W.F. Cooke.--Returns to America.--Troubles multiply.--Letter to the
Honorable John Y. Mason on political matters.--Kendall urges severing of
connection with cable company.--Morse, nevertheless, decides to
continue.--Appointed electrician of company.--Sails on U.S.S. Niagara.--
Letter from Paris on the crinoline.--Expedition sails from Liverpool.--
Queenstown harbor.--Accident to his leg.--Valencia.--Laying of cable
begun.--Anxieties.--Three successful days.--Cable breaks.--Failure.--
Returns to America.--Retires from cable enterprise.--Predicts in 1858
failure of apparently successful laying of cable.--Sidney E. Morse.--The
Hare and the Tortoise.--European testimonial: considered niggardly by
Kendall.--Decorations, medals, etc., from European nations.--Letter of
thanks to Count Walewski.

His good democratic eyes a trifle dazzled by all this imperial
magnificence, Morse left St. Petersburg and, with his party, journeyed to
Berlin. What was to him the most interesting incident of his visit to
that city is thus described:--

"_August 23._ To-day I went to Potsdam to see Baron Humboldt, and had a
delightful interview with this wonderful man. Although I had met with him
at the soirées of Baron Gerard, the distinguished painter, in Paris in
1822, and afterward at the Academy of Sciences, when my Telegraph was
exhibited to the assembled academicians in 1838, I took letters of
introduction to him from Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister. But they
were unnecessary, for the moment I entered his room, which is in the
Royal Palace, he called me by name and greeted me most kindly, saying, as
I presented my letters: 'Oh! sir, you need no letters, your name is a
sufficient introduction'; and so, seating myself, he rapidly touched upon
various topics relating to America."