Perhaps the most painful chapter of Morse's life is the history of the lawsuits in which he was involved in defence of his rights. His reputation as well as his property were assailed. Exceedingly sensitive to these attacks, the suits that followed the success of the telegraph cost him inexpressible distress. It is some satisfaction to be able to record that after years of bitter controversy the final decision was favorable to the inventor. Honors began to pour in upon him from even the uttermost parts of the earth. The Sultan of Turkey was the first monarch to acknowledge Morse as a public benefactor. This was in 1848. The kings of Prussia and Wurtemburg and the Emperor of Austria each gave him a gold medal, that of the first named being set in a massive gold snuff-box. In 1856 the Emperor of the French made him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Orders from Denmark, Spain, Italy, Portugal soon followed. In 1858 a special congress was called by the Emperor of the French to devise a suitable testimonial of the nation to Professor Morse. Representatives from ten sovereignties convened at Paris and by a unanimous vote gave, in the aggregate, $80,000 as an honorary gratuity to Professor Morse. The states participating in this testimonial were France, Austria, Russia, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Piedmont, the Holy See, Tuscany, and Turkey. Professor Morse was one of the first to suggest and the first to carry out the use of a marine cable. During the summer of 1842 he had been making elaborate preparations for an experiment destined to give wonderful development to his invention. This was no less than a submarine wire, to demonstrate the fact that the current of electricity could be conducted as well under water as through the air. Of this he had entertained no doubt. "If I can make it work ten miles, I can make it go around the globe," was a favorite expression of his in the infancy of his enterprise. But he wished to prove it. He insulated his wire as well as he could with hempen strands well covered with pitch, tar, and india-rubber. In the course of the autumn he was prepared to put the question to the test of actual experiment. The wire was only the twelfth of an inch in diameter. About two miles of this, wound on a reel, was placed in a small row-boat, and with one man at the oars and Professor Morse at the stern, the work of paying out the cable was begun. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and those who had prolonged their evening rambles on the Battery must have wondered, as they watched the proceedings in the boat, what kind of fishing the two men could be engaged in that required so long a line. In somewhat less than two hours, on that eventful evening of October 18, 1842, the first cable was laid. Professor Morse returned to his lodgings and waited with some anxiety the time when he should be able to test the experiment fully and fairly. The next morning the New York _Herald_ contained the following editorial announcement: