I hope the French will avail themselves of the benefits you offer them. It is truly strange that it is not grasped at with more avidity. If I can do anything in Egypt, I will try Turkey and St. Petersburg.'" Morse himself writes: "In another letter from Mr. Chamberlain to Mr. Levering, dated Syra, January 9, he says: 'The pretty little Queen of Greece was delighted with Morse's telegraph. The string which carried the cannon-ball used for a weight broke, and came near falling on Her Majesty's toes, but happily missed, and we, perhaps, escaped a prison. My best respects to Mr. Morse, and say I shall ask Mehemet Ali for a purse, a beauty from his seraglio, and something else.'" And Morse concludes: "I will add that, if he will bring me the purse just now, I can dispense with the beauty and the something else." Tragedy too often treads on the heels of comedy, and it is sad to have to relate that Mr. Chamberlain and six other gentlemen were drowned while on an excursion of pleasure on the Danube in July of 1839. That all these disappointments, added to the necessity for making money in some way for his bare subsistence, should have weighed on the inventor's spirits, is hardly to be wondered at; the wonder is rather that he did not sink under his manifold trials. Far from this, however, he only touches on his needs in the following letter to Alfred Vail, written on November 14, 1839:-- "As to the Telegraph, I have been compelled from necessity to apply myself to those duties which yield immediate pecuniary relief. I feel the pressure as well as others, and, having several pupils at the University, I must attend to them. Nevertheless, I shall hold myself ready in case of need to go to Washington during the next session with it. The one I was constructing is completed except the rotary batteries and the pen-and-ink apparatus, which I shall soon find time to add if required. "Mr. Smith expects me in Portland, but I have not the means to visit him. The telegraph of Wheatstone is going ahead in England, even with all its complications; so, I presume, is the one of Steinheil in Bavaria. Whether ours is to be adopted depends on the Government or on a company, and the times are not favorable for the formation of a company. Perhaps it is the part of wisdom to let the matter rest and watch for an opportunity when times look better, and which I hope will be soon." He gives freer vent to his disappointment in a letter to Mr. Smith, of November 20, 1839:--