The attention of the universe was, indeed, before long attracted to this child of Morse's brain, and kingdom after kingdom wheeled into line, vying with each other in admiration and acceptance.
The message was recorded fourfold by means of a newly invented fountain pen, and was given to General Cummings and preserved by him.

It is here reproduced.
[Illustration: "ATTENTION THE UNNIVERSE! BY KINGDOMS RIGHT WHEEL!" Facsimile of the First Morse Alphabet Message, now In the National Museum, Washington] It will be noticed that the signs for the letters are those, not of the first form of the alphabet as embodied in the drawing attached to the caveat, but of the finally adopted code.

This has led some historians, notably Mr.Franklin Leonard Pope, to infer that some mistake has been made in giving out this as a facsimile of this early message; that the letters should have been those of the earlier alphabet.

I think, however, that this is but an added proof that Morse devised the first form of the code long before he met Vail, and that the changes to the final form, a description of which I have given, were made by Morse in 1837, or early in 1838, as soon as he became convinced of the superiority of the alphabetic mode, in plenty of time to have been used in this exhibition.
The month of January, 1838, was a busy one at Morristown, for Morse and Vail were bending all their energies toward the perfecting and completion of the instruments, so that a demonstration of the telegraph could be given in Washington at as early a date as possible.

Morse refers feelingly to the trials and anxieties of an inventor in a letter to a friend, dated January 22, 1838:-- "I have just returned from nearly six weeks' absence at Morristown, New Jersey, where I have been engaged in the superintendence of the making of my Telegraph for Washington.
"Be thankful, C----, that you are not an inventor.