I found myself in what was evidently an artist's studio, but every object in it bore indubitable signs of unthrift and neglect.

The statuettes, busts, and models of various kinds were covered with dust and cobwebs; dusty canvases were faced to the wall, and stumps of brushes and scraps of paper littered the floor.

The only signs of industry consisted of a few masterly crayon drawings, and little luscious studies of color pinned to the wall.
"'You will have an artist for a neighbor,' said the janitor, 'though he is not here much of late; he seems to be getting rather shiftless; he is wasting his time over some silly invention, a machine by which he expects to send messages from one place to another.

He is a very good painter, and might do well if he would only stick to his business; but, Lord!' he added with a sneer of contempt, 'the idea of telling by a little streak of lightning what a body is saying at the other end of it.' "Judge of my astonishment when he informed me that the 'shiftless individual' whose foolish waste of time so much excited his commiseration, was none other than the President of the National Academy of Design--the most exalted position, in my youthful artistic fancy, it was possible for mortal to attain--S.F.B.

Morse, since better known as the inventor of the Electric Telegraph.