"Tell your dear father and Uncle Sidney that this is the portion of the bill for the monument which I choose to assume. Tell them I have still a good memory of past years, when I was poor and received from them the kind attentions of affectionate brothers. I am now, through the loving kindness and bounty of our Heavenly Father, in such circumstances that I can afford this small testimonial to their former fraternal kindness, and I know no better occasion to manifest the long pent-up feelings of my heart towards them than by lightening, under the embarrassments of the times, the pecuniary burden of our united testimonial to the best of fathers and mothers." This monument, a tall column surmounted by a terrestrial globe, symbolical of the fact that the elder Morse was the first American geographer, is still to be seen in the New Haven cemetery. Another instance of the inventor's desire to show his gratitude towards those who had befriended him in his days of poverty and struggle is shown in a letter of November 17, 1862, to the widow of Alfred Vail:-- "You are aware that a sum of money was voted me by a special Congress, convened at Paris for the purpose, as a personal, honorary gratuity as the Inventor of the Telegraph.... Notwithstanding, however, that the Congress had put the sum voted me on the ground of a personal, honorary gratuity, I made up my mind in the very outset that I would divide to your good husband just that proportion of what I might receive (after due allowance and deduction of my heavy expenses in carrying through the transaction) as would have been his if the money so voted by the Congress had been the purchase money of patent rights. This design I early intimated to Mr. Vail, and I am happy in having already fulfilled in part my promise to him, when I had received the gratuity only in part. It was only the last spring that the whole sum, promised in four annual instalments (after the various deductions in Europe) has been remitted to me.... I wrote to Mr. Cobb [one of Alfred Vail's executors] some months ago, while he was in Washington, requesting an early interview to pay over the balance for you, but have never received an answer.... Could you not come to town this week, either with or without Mr. Cobb, as is most agreeable to you, prepared to settle this matter in full? If so, please drop me a line stating the day and hour you will come, and I will make it a point to be at home at the time." In this connection I shall quote from a letter to Mr. George Vail, written much earlier in the year, on May 19:-- "It will give me much pleasure to aid you in your project of disposing of the _'original wire'_ of the Telegraph, and if my certificate to its genuineness will be of service, you shall cheerfully have it. I am not at this moment aware that there is any quantity of this wire anywhere else, except it may be in the helices of the big magnets which I have at Poughkeepsie. These shall not interfere with your design.