"Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limited--so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought. Prior to the summer of 1837, at which time Mr. Alfred Vail's attention became attracted to my telegraph, I depended upon my pencil for subsistence. Indeed, so straitened were my circumstances that, in order to save time to carry out my invention and to economize my scanty means, I had for many months lodged and eaten in my studio, procuring my food in small quantities from some grocery and preparing it myself. To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of life for many years." Before the telegraph was actually tried and practised the cumbersome piano-key board devised by Morse in his first experiments was done away with and the simple device of a single key, with which we are all familiar, was adopted. Meantime Morse was practically abandoning art. His friends among the profession had subscribed $3,000 in order to enable him to paint the picture he had in mind when he applied for the government work at Washington, "The Signing of the First Compact on Board the Mayflower," and he undertook the commission in 1838, only to give it up in 1841 and to return to the subscribers the amount paid with interest. [Illustration: Diagram showing the Method of Telegraphing from a Moving Train by Induction.]