Again he writes to his wife: "My cash is almost gone, and I begin to feel some anxiety and perplexity to know what to do. I have advertised, and visited, and hinted, and pleaded, and even asked one man to sit, but all to no purpose.... My expenses, with the most rigid economy too, are necessarily great; my rent to-morrow will amount to thirty-three dollars, and I have nothing to pay it with. What can I do? I have been here five weeks, and there is not the smallest prospect _now_ of any difference as to business." He now attempted to obtain a situation in the legation about to be sent to Mexico. The place was promised, and Morse went to Washington, only to find that the expedition had been abandoned. There was an occasional rift in the clouds, as when the corporation of the city of New York commissioned Morse to paint for them a portrait of General Lafayette, then in Washington, the price to be about one thousand dollars. As Sully, Peale, Inman, and other prominent artists were competitors in the application for this picture, to receive the commission was indeed an honor. Morse now wrote cheerfully to his wife: "When I consider how wonderfully things are working for the promotion of the great and _long desired_ event,--that of being constantly with my dear family,--all unpleasant feelings are absorbed in this joyful anticipation, and I look forward to the spring of the year with delightful prospects of seeing my dear family permanently settled with me in our own hired house here." February 8, 1825, he wrote his wife that he had met Lafayette, "the man whose beloved name has rung from one end of this continent to the other, whom all flock to see, whom all delight to honor." That very day a letter was penned him, not this time by the wife, but by his father. "My affectionately beloved son: Mysterious are the ways of Providence. My heart is in pain and deeply sorrowful, while I announce to you the sudden and unexpected death of your dear and deservedly loved wife. Her death proved to be an _affection of the heart, incurable_ had it been known.... I wrote you yesterday that she was _convalescent_. So she then appeared and so the doctor pronounced. She was up about five o'clock yesterday afternoon, to have her bed made, as usual; was unusually cheerful and social; spoke of the pleasure of being with her dear husband in New York ere long; stepped into bed herself, fell back, with a momentary struggle, on her pillow; her eyes were immediately fixed, the paleness of death overspread her countenance, and in five minutes more, without the slightest motion, her mortal life terminated.