I have been so constantly under the necessity of watching the movements of the most unprincipled set of pirates I have ever known, that all my time has been occupied in defense, in putting evidence into something like legal shape that I am the inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph!! Would you have believed it ten years ago that a question could be raised on that subject?
Yet this very morning in the 'Journal of Commerce' is an article from a New Orleans paper giving an account of a public meeting convened by O'Reilly, at which he boldly stated that I had '_pirated my invention from a German invention_' a great deal better than mine.

And the 'Journal of Commerce' has a sort of halfway defense of me which implies there is some doubt on the subject.

I have written a note which may appear in to-morrow's 'Journal,' quite short, but which I think, will stop that game here.
"A trial in court is the only event now which will put public opinion right, so indefatigable have these unprincipled men been in manufacturing a spurious public opinion.
"Although these events embarrass me, and I do not receive, and may not receive, my rightful dues, yet I have been so favored by a kind Providence as to have sufficient collected to free my farm from mortgage on the 1st of May, and so find a home, a beautiful home, for me and mine, unencumbered, and sufficient over to make some improvements....
"I do not wish to raise too many expectations, but every day I am more and more charmed with my purchase.

I can truly say I have never before so completely realized my wishes in regard to situation, never before found so many pleasant circumstances associated together to make a home agreeable, and, so far as earth is concerned, I only wish now to have you and the rest of the family participate in the advantages with which a kind God has been pleased to indulge me.
"Strange, indeed, would it be if clouds were not in the sky, but the Sun of Righteousness will dissipate as many and as much of them as shall be right and good, and this is all that should be required.

I look not for freedom from trials; they must needs be; but the number, the kind, the form, the degree of them, I can safely leave to Him who has ordered and will still order all things well.".