Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - Volume I. | Page 9

am sorry to be
of so much trouble to you and the cause of so much anxiety in you and
especially in mama. I wish you to give my very affectionate love to my
dear brothers, and tell them they must write me and not be homesick,
but consider that I am farther from home than they are, 136 miles from
home. I remain
Your ever affectionate son, S.F.B. MORSE.
It would seem, from other letters which follow, that he had difficulty in
keeping up with his class, and that he eventually dropped a class, for he
did not graduate until 1810. He also seems to have been rooming
outside of college and to have been eager to go in.
It is curious, in the light of future events, to note that young Morse's
parents were fearful lest his volatile nature and lack of steadfastness of

purpose should mar his future career. His dominating characteristic in
later life was a bulldog tenacity, which led him to stick to one idea
through discouragements and disappointments which would have
overwhelmed a weaker nature.
The following extracts are from a long letter from his mother dated
November 23, 1805:--
"I am fearful, my son, that you think a great deal more of your
amusements than your studies, and there lies the difficulty, and the
same difficulty would exist were you in college.
"You have filled your letter with requests to go into college and an
account of a gunning party, both of which have given us pain. I am
truly sorry that you appear so unsteady as by your own account you
are....
"You mention in the letter you wrote first that, if you went into college,
you and your chum would want brandy and wine and segars in your
room. Pray is that the custom among the students? We think it a very
improper one, indeed, and hope the government of college will not
permit it. There is no propriety at all in such young boys as you having
anything to do with anything of the kind, and your papa and myself
positively prohibit you the use of these things till we think them more
necessary than we do at present....
"You will remember that you have promised in your first letter to be an
economist. In your last letter you seem to have forgotten all about it.
Pray, what do your gunning parties cost you for powder and shot? I beg
you to consider and not go driving on from one foolish whim to another
till you provoke us to withdraw from you the means of gratifying you
in anything that may be even less objectionable than gunning."
These exhortations seem to have had, temporarily, at least, the desired
effect, for in a letter to his parents dated December 18, 1805, young
Morse says: "I shall not go out to gun any more, for I know it makes
you anxious about me."

The letters of the parents to the son are full of pious exhortations, and
good advice, and reproaches to the boy for not writing oftener and more
at length, and for not answering every question asked by the parents. It
is comforting to the present-day parent to learn that human nature was
much the same in those pious days of old, differing only in degree, and
that there is hope for the most wayward son and careless correspondent.
The following letters from the elder Morse I shall include as being of
rather more than ordinary interest, and as showing the breadth of his
activity.
CHARLESTOWN, December 23, 1806. To THE BISHOP OP
LONDON,
REV'D AND RESPECTED SIR,--I presume that it might be agreeable
to you to know the precise state of the property which originally
belonged to the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia.
I have with some pains obtained the law of that State respecting this
singular business.
I find that it destroys the establishment and asserts that "all property
belonging to the said (Protestant Episcopal) Church devolved on the
good people of this Commonwealth (i.e., Virginia) on the dissolution of
the British Government here, in the same degree in which the right and
interest of the said Church was therein derived from them," and
authorizes the overseers of the poor of any county "in which any glebe
land is vacant, or shall become so by the death or removal of any
incumbent, to sell all such land and appurtenances and every other
species of property incident thereto to the highest bidder"--"Provided
that nothing herein contained shall authorize an appropriation to any
religious purpose whatever."
I make no comments on the above. I believe no other State in the Union
has, in this respect, imitated the example of Virginia.
I take the liberty to send you a few small tracts for