Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [5]
The last condition set off a new struggle, fought on Finley’s side with more lightly veiled threats. He lived so far from school, he now protested, that he could not hear the campus bell—causing him to miss prayers: “It is very necessary that I should room in college as soon as possible. I am absent from prayers and resitation [sic] very often.” Living off campus made it necessary for him to go on gunning parties, too: “I need some exercise. If I walk that is no amusement & if I wish to play ball or any thing else I have no one to play with.”
Around the fall of 1807, when he was sixteen, Finley did at last settle in his own room at the College. Again Jedediah and Elizabeth reminded him weekly of his fallen state and need to seek Christ. But they stressed more urgently than before the need to economize. Scrimping by on Jedediah’s thankless salary, and with two other sons to raise, they sent Finley hand-me-down slippers, patches for his shirts and coats: “be careful my son not to dirt [sic] more Clothes than is necesary [sic],” Elizabeth wrote; “Washing is so Dear put on two clean Shirts a week two Neck Cloths & one pair of stockings is enough.” Finley wanted to show that he understood: “You expend & have expended a great deal more money on me than I deserve,” he said, “& granted me a great many of my requests & I am sure I can certainly grant you one, that of being economical.”
But Finley found his promise hard to keep. He ran up a staggering bill of $43 at the College Buttery—the campus outlet for ice cream, port (“for my health,” he explained), and the cigars that he continued to smoke. Elizabeth rebuked his money-wasting and condemned the place as a hangout for “Idle Gluttons among the scholars.” She thought no better of Finley’s desire for a new, fashionable coat. His brown one for every day and blue one for the Sabbath sufficed, she said, “quite enough for any boy that is not a going to be an extravagant foolish fellow. You will remember that you have promised in your first letter to be an oeconomist.”
Finley knew that his letters home often sounded grasping and manipulative. He parodied one of them for his brothers’ amusement: “Please send me a pocketbook, please send me some Hale cider, please send me some kittens and young puppies. I now take this opportunity of writing to you to inform you that I am sick.” But in truth one could not live at the College without spending money, and it irked him to be scolded for having his ice skates sharpened: “I think every minute I shall recieve [sic] a letter from home blaming me for not being more economical & thus I am kept in distress all the time.”
Jedediah and Elizabeth prodded Finley to stay at the head of his class. Despite his lively intellect, however, his academic record was mediocre. One time or another he studied history, philosophy, English composition, Greek and French, geometry and trigonometry. But he failed to earn such college distinctions as a junior-class “Appointment” (“I am ‘disappointed,’ ” he kidded). When his brothers joined him at Yale, about halfway through his schooling, they both outshone him. Richard was chosen to deliver a commencement address; Sidney made Phi Beta Kappa.
Finley’s lusterless performance confirmed his parents’ suspicion that their son was flighty. His moods and desires shifted in an unmanly way. Now he wanted to change roommates, then to room by himself, another time to drop his studies and come home for a while. Elizabeth chided him for “driving on from one foolish Whim to another.” Jedediah made it clear that between a resolute and a restless spirit the difference was success in life or failure: “steady and undissipated attention