Facing the speakers of the evening hung a portrait of the departed. It was surrounded by a white groundwork, inlaid with an inscription in green letters: “What God hath wrought.” It was the picture of a man in the winter of life, with hair and beard of snow; a face not classically made, but with fine, manly features, that must have glowed with indestructible beauty when lit up by the enthusiastic genius within. Samuel F. B. Morse has gone the way of all the earth. He lived to know that his name had been spoken by the intellectual world from pole to pole. No more honor could be bestowed upon his ashes; and his memory is embalmed in the soul of his country. One of the speakers of the evening said that Professor Morse was born the same year that Benjamin Franklin died, and the lives of the two men seemed like joining a broken thread. And this reminds the writer of a man who might have been seen in that audience who to-day is trying on the same field to get Congress to help him to demonstrate to the people that wires and batteries and Atlantic cables are only so much waste matter; that from given points anywhere on the world’s surface that same lightning which Franklin brought to earth with his kite can be harnessed to do his bidding. He has got his patent, his invention, and his faith. As with Morse, Congress is afraid to “establish a precedent,” and so another inventor goes begging his way, perhaps to immortal fame. OLIVIA. ON THE PROMENADE. A SATURDAY HOLIDAY WITH ITS STROLLERS AND EQUIPAGES. WASHINGTON, _April 22, 1872_. Spring, though laggard, has at last smiled upon Washington. Once more the bosom of Mother Earth has yielded up the frost and the baby vegetation wears a smiling face. No longer the cold, bitter winds smite the wayfarer, for the king of the season has tempered their edge. Saturday afternoon at the capital is a holiday. Congress usually adjourns from Friday until Monday. Not always the Senate, but the House, which is a much harder-worked body, necessarily must have a short respite for breathing time, although it is claimed by the members that the last day of the week is the hardest of them all. A Senator who holds his position for six years can afford to take more or less ease; but a member who has only two years to serve, if he has any ambition or talent, is about the hardest-worked man in the nation. He has the superhuman effort to perform of making himself felt in Congress; at the same time he must manage to keep the peace at home. The majority of them know there are men in their districts as gifted as themselves, who are working out the problem of rotation in office. So when Saturday afternoon comes they try to forget their troubles whilst riding up and down Pennsylvania avenue, with the smoke of cigars issuing from their lips; but only the women suffragists envy this deceitful happiness.