METHOD IN HIS MADNESS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 31

METHOD IN HIS MADNESS.

An artist says that in the spring of 1841 he was searching for a studio in which to set up his easel. His ‘ househunting' ended at the New York University, where he found what he wanted in one of the turrets of that stately edifice.

When I had made my choice the janitor, who accompanied me in my examination of the rooms, threw open a door on the opposite side of the hall, and invited me to enter. 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 were a few masterly crayon drawings and little studies of colour, pinned to the wall.

‘ You will have an artist for your neighbour? 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? 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. His friends think he is crazy on the subject, and try to dissuade him from it, but he persists in it until he is almost ruined?

Judge of my astonishment when he informed me that the ‘ shiftless ’ individual, whose foolish waste of time so excited his commiseration, was none other than the President of the National Academy of Design,—the most exalted position, in my youthful, artistic fancy, that it was possible for mortal to attain,—S. F. B. Morse, since much better known as the inventor of the electric telegraph ! Only a little while after this his fame was flashing through the world, and the unbelievers who had voted him insane were forced to confess that there was at least * method in his madness?