From 1830 to 1900, a tide of influential Americans — artists, writers, painters and doctors — braved the treacherous journey across the Atlantic to visit Paris. They were faced with newness and oftentimes an intense loneliness which drove the fragile back home. Those who stuck it out, learned from the French and their expanded view profoundly changed not only the travelers, but also America itself.

Charles Sumner studied at the Paris-Sorbonne University, he was astonished to see black students treated as equals and, as a result, Sumner returned to America to become an unflinching voice against slavery.

James Fenimore Cooper (author of “The Last of the Mohicans”) wrote some of his most significant works in Paris, working with his close friend Samuel F.B. Morse. Morse was inspired by the French communication system of semaphores and went on to invent the modern electrical telegraph. History has shown that his famous code radically changed communications and presented a global interaction.

From Science and Health, “There is neither place nor opportunity in Science for error of any sort. Every day makes its demands upon us for better proofs rather than verbal claims of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfill.”