The Works of James Abram Garfield

Download or read book The Works of James Abram Garfield written by James Abram Garfield and published by . This book was released on 1882 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DR. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE. REMARKS MADE AT THE MORSE MEMORIAL MEETING, HELD IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, April 16, 1872. THE grave has just closed over the mortal remains of one whose name will be forever associated with a series of achievements in the domain of discovery and invention the most wonderful our race has ever known, ?wonderful in the results accomplished, more wonderful still in the agencies employed, most wonderful in the scientific revelations which preceded and accompanied their development. The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment?I might say the incarnation ? of many centuries of thought, of many generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her deepest mysteries. No one man, no one century, could have achieved it. It is the child of the human race, ? the heir of all the ages. How wonderful were the steps which led to its creation The very name of this telegraphic instrument bears record of its history, ? electric, magnetic; the first word from the bit of yellow amber, whose qualities of attraction and repulsion were discovered by a Grecian philosopher twenty-four centuries ago, and the second from Magnesia, the village of Asia Minor where first was found the loadstone whose touch forever turns the needle to the north. These were the earliest forms in which that subtle, all-pervading force revealed itself to men. In the childhood of the race, men stood dumb in the presence of its more terrible manifestations. When it gleamed in the purple aurora, or shot dusky-red from the clouds, it was the eye-flash of an angry God, before whom mortals quailed in helpless fear. When the electric light burned blue on the spear-points of the Roman legions, it was to them and their leaders a portent fromthe gods, beckoning to victory. W..