The Mr. Habersham here jokingly referred to was R.W. Habersham, of Augusta, Georgia, who in the year 1831 was an art student in the _atelier_ of Baron Gros, and between whom and Morse a friendship sprang up. They roomed together at a time when the cholera was raging in Paris, but, owing to Mr. Habersham's wise insistence that all the occupants of the house should take a teaspoonful of charcoal every morning, all escaped the disease. Mr. Habersham in after years wrote and sent to Morse some of his reminiscences of that period, and from these I shall quote the following as being of more than ordinary interest:-- "The Louvre was always closed on Monday to clean up the gallery after the popular exhibition of the paintings on Sunday, so that Monday was our day for visits, excursions, etc. On one occasion I was left alone, and two or three times during the week he was absent. This was unusual, but I asked no questions and made no remarks. But on Saturday evening, sitting by our evening lamp, he seemed lost in thought, till suddenly he remarked: 'The mails in our country are too slow; this French telegraph is better, and would do even better in our clear atmosphere than here, where half the time fogs obscure the skies. But this will not be fast enough--_the lightning would serve us better_.' "These may not be the exact words, but they convey the sense, and I, laughing, said: 'Aha! I see what you have been after, you have been examining the French system of telegraphing.' He admitted that he had taken advantage of the kind offer of one in authority to do so.... "There was, on one occasion, another reference made to the conveyance of sound under water, and to the length of time taken to communicate the letting in of the water into the Erie Canal by cannon shots to New York, and other means, during which the suggestion of using keys and wires, like the piano, was rejected as requiring too many wires, if other things were available. I recollect also that in our frequent visits to Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper's, in the Rue St. Dominique, these subjects, so interesting to Americans, were often introduced, and that Morse seemed to harp on them, constantly referring to Franklin and Lord Bacon. Now I, while recognizing the intellectual grandeur of both these men, had contracted a small opinion of their moral strength; but Morse would uphold and excuse, or rather deny, the faults attributed. Lord Bacon, especially, he held to have _sacrificed himself to serve the queen in her aberrations_; while of Franklin, 'the Great American,' recognized by the French, he was particularly proud." Cooper also remembered some such hints of a telegraph made by Morse at that time, for in "The Sea Lions,"[1] on page 161, he says:-- [Footnote 1: The Riverside Press, 1870.]