When he was seven he went to Andover, Massachusetts, to school, and still later entered Phillips Academy in the same town. At fourteen he entered Yale College, where from the first he was a good, faithful student. [Illustration: S.F.B. Morse.] As his father was poor, Finley had to help himself along, and was able to do it by painting, on ivory, likenesses of his classmates and professors, for which he received from one dollar to five dollars each. In this way he made considerable money. At the end of his college course he made painting his chosen profession and went to London, where he studied four years under Benjamin West. Though for some years he divided his time and effort between painting and invention, he at last decided to devote himself wholly to invention. This change in his life-work was the outcome of an incident which took place on a second voyage home from Europe, where he had been spending another period in study. On the ocean steamer the conversation at dinner one day was about some experiments with electricity. One of the men present said that so far as had been learned from experiment electricity passes through any length of wire in a second of time. "Then," said Morse, "thought can be transmitted hundreds of miles in a moment by means of electricity; for, if electricity will go ten miles without stopping, I can make it go around the globe." [Illustration: The First Telegraph Instrument.] When once he began to think about this great possibility, the thought held him in its grip. In fact, it shut out all others. Through busy days and sleepless nights he turned it over and over. And often, while engaged in other duties, he would snatch his notebook from his pocket in order to outline the new instrument he had in mind and jot down the signs he would use in sending messages. It was not long before he had worked out on paper the whole scheme of transmitting thought over long distances by means of electricity. And now began twelve toilsome years of struggle to plan and work out machinery for his invention. All these years he had to earn money for the support of his three motherless children. So he gave up to painting much time that he would otherwise have spent upon his invention. His progress, therefore, was slow and painful, but he pressed forward. He was not the kind of man to give up. In a room on the fifth floor of a building in New York City he toiled at his experiments day and night, with little food, and that of the simplest kind. Indeed so meagre was his fare, mainly crackers and tea, that he bought provisions at night in order to keep his friends from finding out how great his need was. [Illustration: Modern Telegraph Office.] During this time of hardship all that kept starvation from his door was lessons in painting to a few pupils. On a certain occasion Morse said to one of them, who owed him for a few months' teaching: "Well, Strothers, my boy, how are we off for money?"