But the day was bitterly cold, and
the exposure cost him his life. Some months later, as he lay on his sick
bed, he observed to the doctor, 'The best is yet to come.' In tapping
his chest one day, the physician said,' This is the way we doctors
telegraph, professor,' and Morse replied with a smile, 'Very good--very
good.' These were his last words. He died at New York on April 2, 1872,
at the age of eighty-one years, and was buried in the Greenwood
Cemetery.
CHAPTER IV.
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.
Sir William Thomson, the greatest physicist of the age, and the highest
authority on electrical science, theoretical and applied, was born at
Belfast on June 25, 1824. His father, Dr. James Thomson, the son of a
Scots-Irish farmer, showed a bent for scholarship when a boy, and became
a pupil teacher in a small school near Ballynahinch, in County Down.
With his summer earnings he educated himself at Glasgow University
during winter. Appointed head master of a school in connection with the
Royal Academical Institute, he subsequently obtained the professorship
of mathematics in that academy. In 1832 he was called to the chair of
mathematics in the University of Glasgow, where he achieved a reputation
by his text-books on arithmetic and mathematics.
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