EDISON WHEN ABOUT FOURTEEN OR FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE

Edison wanted lots of practice, and secured it in an ingenious manner. If he could have had his way he would have sat up until the small hours of the morning, but his father insisted on eleven-thirty as the proper bed-time, which left but a short interval after a long day on the train.

Now, each evening, when the boy went home with newspapers that had not been sold, his father would sit up to read them. So Edison on some excuse had his friend take the papers, but suggested to his father that he could get the news from the chum by telegraph bit by bit. The scheme interested the father, and was put into effect, the messages over the wire being written down by Edison and handed to the old gentleman to read.

This gave good practice every night until twelve or one o'clock, and was kept up for some time, until the father became willing that his son should sit up for a reasonable time. The papers were then brought home again, and the boys practised to their hearts' content, until the line was pulled down by a stray cow wandering through the orchard.

Now we come to the incident which may be regarded as turning Edison's thoughts more definitely to electricity. One August morning, in 1862, the mixed train on which he worked as newsboy was doing some shunting at Mount Clemens station. A laden box-car had been pushed out of a siding, when Edison, who was loitering about the platform, saw the little son of the station agent, Mr. J. U. Mackenzie, playing with the gravel on the main track, along which the car, without a brakeman, was rapidly approaching.

Edison dropped his papers and his cap and made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as the wheel struck his heel. Both were cut about the face and hands by the gravel ballast on which they fell.

The two boys were picked up by the train-hands and carried to the platform, and the grateful father, who knew and liked the rescuer, offered to teach him the art of train telegraphy and to make an operator of him. It is needless to say that the proposal was most eagerly accepted.

Edison found time for his new studies by letting one of his friends look after the newsboy work on the train for part of the trip, keeping for himself the run between Port Huron and Mount Clemens. We have already seen that he was qualified as a beginner, and, besides, he was able to take to the station a neat little set of instruments he had just finished at a gun shop in Detroit.

What with his business as newsboy, his publication of the Weekly Herald, his reading and chemical and electrical experiments, Edison was leading a busy life and making rapid progress, but unexpectedly there came disaster, which brought about a sudden change. One day, as the train was running swiftly over a piece of poorly laid track, there was a sudden lurch, and a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor and burst into flame.

The car took fire, and Edison was trying in vain to put out the blaze when the conductor rushed in with water and saved the car. On arriving at the next station the enraged conductor put the boy off with his entire outfit, including his laboratory and printing-plant.

The origin of Edison's deafness may be told in his own words: "My train was standing by the platform at Smith's Creek station. I was trying to climb into the freight car with both arms full of papers when the conductor took me by the ears and lifted me. I felt something snap inside my head, and my deafness started from that time and has ever since progressed."

"This deafness has been a great advantage to me in various ways. When in a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and, unlike the other operators, I was not bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve the transmitter so that I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked over one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word "specie" perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done I knew that everything else could be done—which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing."

But we left young Edison on the station platform, sorrowful and indignant, as the train moved off, deserting him in the midst of his beloved possessions. He was saddened, but not altogether discouraged, and after some trouble succeeded in making his way home, where he again set up his laboratory and also his printing-office. There was some objection on the part of the family, as they feared that they might also suffer from fire, but he promised not to bring in anything of a dangerous nature.

He continued to publish the Weekly Herald, but after a while was persuaded by a chum to change its character and publish it under the name of Paul Pry, making it a journal of town gossip about local people and their affairs and peculiarities.

No copies of Paul Pry can now be found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, and the weaknesses of the townspeople were discussed in it very freely and frankly by the two boys. It caused no small offense, and in one instance Edison was pitched into the St. Clair River by one of the victims whose affairs had been given such unsought publicity.

Possibly this was one of the reasons that caused Edison to give up the paper not very long afterward. He had a great liking for newspaper work, and might have continued in that field had it not been for strong influences in other directions. There is no question, however, that he was the youngest publisher and editor of his time.

The Grand Trunk Railroad machine shops at Port Huron had a great attraction for young Edison. The boy who was to have much to do with the evolution of the modern electric locomotive in later years was fascinated with the mechanism of the steam locomotive. Whenever he could get the chance he would ride with the engineer in the cab, and he liked nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the run. Edison's own account of what happened on of these trips is very laughable. He says:

"The engine was one of a number leased to the Grank Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over the woodwork, was beautifully painted, and everything was highly polished, which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped it on his roads. It was a slow freight train. The engineer and fireman had been out all night at a dance. After running about fifteen miles they became so sleepy that they couldn't keep their eyes open, and agreed to permit me to run the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which was very much out of the ordinary. I was greatly worried about the water, and I knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn't gone twenty miles before black, damp mud blew out of the stack and covered every part of the engine, including myself. I was about to awaken the fireman to find out the cause of this, when it stopped. Then I approached a station where the fireman always went out to the cow-catcher, opened the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured oil in. I started to carry out the procedure, when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam rushed out with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking me off the engine. I succeeded in closing the oil-cup and got back in the cab, and made up my mind that she would pull through without oil. I learned afterward that the engineer always shut off steam when the fireman went to oil. This point I failed to notice. My powers of observation were very much improved after this occurrence. Just before I reached the junction another outpour of black mud occurred, and the whole engine was a sight—so much so that when I pulled into the yard everybody turned to see it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason of the mud was that I carried so much water it passed over into the stack, and this washed out all the accumulated soot."

One afternoon, about a week before Christmas, the train on which Edison was a newsboy jumped the track. Four old cars with rotten sills went all to pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track. Hating to see so much waste, the boy tried to save all he could by eating it on the spot, but, as a result, he says, "our family doctor had the time of his life with me."

Another incident, which shows free and easy railroading and Southern extravagance, is related by Edison, as follows:

"In 1860, just before the war broke out, there came to the train one afternoon in Detroit two fine-looking young men, accompanied by a colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron, the terminal point for the train. After leaving the junction just outside of Detroit, I brought in the evening papers. When I came opposite the two young men, one of them said, 'Boy, what have you got?' I said, 'Papers.' 'All right.' He took them and threw them out of the window, and, turning to the colored man, said, 'Nicodemus, pay this boy.' I told Nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me. The passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction. I returned with the illustrated papers and magazines. These were seized and thrown out of the window, and I was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then returned with all the old magazines and novels I had not been able to sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. I was small and thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all I could possibly carry. I had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit again. When I opened the door all the passengers roared with laughter. I walked right up to the young men. One asked me what I had. I said, 'Magazines and novels.' He promptly threw them out of the window, and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with cracked hickory nuts, then popcorn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. All went out of the window. I felt like Alexander the Great!—I had no more chances! I had sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk, which was about the size of a carpenter's chest, and started to pull this from the baggage-car to the passenger-car. It was almost too much for my strength, but at last I got it in front of those men. I pulled off my coat and hat and shoes and laid them on the chest. Then the young man asked, 'What have you got, boy?' I said, 'Everything, sir, that I can spare that is for sale.' The passengers fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me $27 for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear of the car. These men were from the South, and I have always retained a soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman."

While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day to go to the office of E. B. Ward & Co., at that time the largest owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another captain who lived about fourteen miles from Ridgeway station on the railroad. This captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had cleared part of it. Edison was offered fifteen dollars by Mr. Ward to go and fetch him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark, Edison stood out for twenty-five dollars, so that he could get the companionship of another lad. The terms were agreed to. Edison arrived at Ridgeway at 8.30 P.M., when it was raining and as dark as ink. Getting with difficulty another boy to volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black night. The two boys carried lanterns, but the road was a rough path through dense forest. The country was wild, and it was quite usual to see deer, bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had read about bears, but couldn't remember whether they were day or night prowlers. The farther they went, the more afraid they became, and every stump in the forest looked like a bear. The other lad proposed seeking safety up a tree, but Edison objected on the plea that bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to enable the captain to catch the morning train. First one lantern went out, then the other. Edison says: "We leaned up against a tree and cried. I thought if I ever got out of that scrape alive I would know more about the habits of animals and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of mischance when I again undertook an enterprise. However, the intense darkness dilated the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and we could just see at times the outline of the road. Finally, just as a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain's yard and delivered the message. In my whole life I never spent such a night of horror as that, but I got a good lesson."

An amusing incident of this period is told by Edison. "When I was a boy," he says, "the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, came to Canada (1860). Great preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian town opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself, went over to see the affair. The town was draped in flags most profusely, and carpets were laid on the cross-walks for the Prince to walk on. There were arches, etc. A stand was built, raised above the general level, where the Prince was to be received by the Mayor. Seeing all these preparations, my idea of a prince was very high; but when he did arrive I mistook the Duke of Newcastle for him, the Duke being a fine-looking man. I soon saw that I was mistaken, that the Prince was a young stripling, and did not meet expectations. Several of us expressed our belief that a prince wasn't much after all, and said that we were thoroughly disappointed. For this one boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck boys attacked the Yankee boys, and we were all badly licked. I, myself, got a black eye. That has always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly."

Many years afterward, when Edison had won fame by many inventions, including his electric-light system, and had been awarded the Albert Gold Medal by the Royal Society of Arts, it was this same prince who wrote a graceful letter which accompanied the medal.

Here is another of Mr. Edison's stories:

"After selling papers in Port Huron, which was often not reached until about nine-thirty at night, I seldom got home before eleven or eleven-thirty. About half-way home from the station and the town, within twenty-five feet of the road, in a dense wood, was a soldiers' graveyard, where three hundred soldiers were buried, due to a cholera epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot, near by, many years previously. At first we used to shut our eyes and run the horse past this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder that I haven't some valvular disease of that organ. But soon this running of the horse became monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely disappeared from my system. I was in the condition of Sam Houston, the pioneer and founder of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston lived some distance from the town, and generally went home late at night, having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy road. One night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself behind a tree, and enveloped himself in a sheet. He confronted Houston suddenly, and Sam stopped and said: 'If you are a man, you can't hurt me. If you are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. And if you are the devil, come home with me; I married your sister!' "

We have already seen that Edison was of an exceedingly studious nature and full of ambition to work, experiment, and hustle. The serious side of his nature did not, however, wholly prevail. He had a keen enjoyment of a joke, even as he has now, and in his boyhood days had no particular objection if it took a practical form. The following, as related by him, is one of many:

"After the breaking out of the War there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered at Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary line of our house. Nearly every night we would hear a call such as 'Corporal of the Guard No. 1.' This would be repeated from sentry to sentry, until it reached the barracks, when Corporal of the Guard No. 1 would come and see what was wanted. I and the little Dutch boy, upon returning from the town after selling our papers, thought we would take a hand at military affairs. So one night, when it was very dark, I shouted for Corporal of the Guard No. 1. The second sentry, thinking it was the terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so on. This brought the corporal along the half mile, only to find that he was fooled. We tried him three nights; but the third night they were watching, and caught the little Dutch boy, took him to the lock-up at the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to the house. I rushed for the cellar. In one small compartment, where there were two barrels of potatoes and a third one nearly empty, I poured these remnants into the other barrels, sat down, and pulled the empty barrel over my head, bottom up. The soldiers had awakened my father, and they were searching for me with candles and lanterns. The corporal was absolutely certain I came into the cellar, and couldn't see how I could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my father if there was no secret hiding-place. On assurance of my father, who said that there was not, he said it was most extraordinary. I was glad when they left, as I was cramped, and the potatoes that had been in the barrel were rotten and violently offensive. The next morning I was found in bed, and received a good switching on the legs from my father, the first and only one I ever received from him, although my mother kept behind the old Seth Thomas clock a switch that had the bark worn off. My mother's ideas and mine differed at times, especially when I got experimenting and mussed up things. The Dutch boy was released next morning."

It may have seemed strange to you, on reading this and the previous chapter, that a lad so young as Edison was during the newsboy period—from about twelve to fifteen years of age—should have been allowed such wide liberty. An extensive traveler for those days, going early and returning late, an experimenter in chemistry, a publisher, printer, newsdealer, amateur locomotive engineer, and what not, covered a large range of experience and action for one so youthful.

To others of the family than his mother he was accounted a strange boy, some believing him to be mentally unbalanced. His mother, however, understood that his was no ordinary mind, for she had studied him thoroughly. While she watched him closely, she allowed him the widest possible sphere of action and encouraged his ever increasing studies.

A member of the family, in talking recently with the writer, said that when any one expressed nervousness about young Edison during his absences she would say: "Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him. God is taking care of him."

After Edison's expulsion from the train with his laboratory and belongings, his career as a newsboy came to a sudden close. But, while he felt some disappointment, he was not discouraged and was none the less busy. As we have seen, he published his local paper for a while and also continued his chemical experiments at home. In addition, he plunged deeply into the study of telegraphy under Mr. Mackenzie's tuition.

Edison took to telegraphy enthusiastically, giving to it no less than eighteen hours a day. After some months he had made such progress that he put up a telegraph line from the station to the village, about a mile distant, and opened an office in a drug store; but the business there was very light and the office was not continued long.

A little later he became the regular operator at Port Huron. The office was in the store of a Mr. M. Walker, who sold jewelry and also newspapers and periodicals. Edison was to be found at the office both day and night, and slept there.

He says: "I became quite valuable to Mr. Walker. After working all day I worked at the office nights as well, for the reason that 'press reports' came over one of the wires until 3 A.M., and I would cut in and copy it as well as I could, to become proficient more rapidly. The goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be able to take press. Mr. Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me at twenty dollars per month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on the Grand Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place, nights, at Stratford Junction, Canada."

Many years afterward Mr. Walker described the boy of sixteen as engrossed intensely in his experiments and scientific reading. The telegraph office was not a busy one, but sometimes messages taken in would remain unsent while Edison was in the cellar busy on some chemical problem.

He would be seen at times reading a scientific paper and then disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from the drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, the truth of the statement he had been reading. If wanted for his experiment, he did not hesitate to make free use of the watchmaker's tools that lay on the table in the front window. His one idea was to do quickly when he wanted to do; and this tendency is still one of his marked characteristics.

The telegrapher's position at Stratford Junction, Canada, was taken by Edison in 1863, when he was sixteen years old, and paid him twenty-five dollars per month. In speaking of it he has since remarked that there was little difference between the telegraph of that time and that of to-day. He says: "The telegraph men couldn't explain how it worked, and I was always trying to get them to do so. I think they couldn't. I remember the best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which operated the railroad wires. He said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire."

Edison was ever keenly anxious to add to his stock of experimental apparatus, as an incident of this period shows: "While working at Stratford Junction," he says, "I was told by one of the freight conductors that in the freight-house at Goodrich there were several boxes of old broken-up batteries. I went there and found over eighty cells of the well-known Grove nitric-acid battery. The operator there, who was also agent, when asked by me if I could have the electrodes of each cell, which were made of sheet platinum, gave his permission readily, thinking they were of tin. I removed them all, and they amounted to several ounces in weight. Platinum even in those days was very expensive, costing several dollars an ounce, and I owned only three small strips. I was overjoyed at this acquisition, and those very strips and the reworked scrap are used to this day in my laboratory, over forty years later."

It was while he was employed as a night operator at Stratford Junction that Edison's inventiveness was first displayed. In order to make sure that the operators were not asleep they were required to send the signal "6" to the train despatcher's office every hour during the night. Now, Edison spent all day in study and experiment, but he needed sleep, just as any healthy youth does, and so he made a small wheel with notches on the rim and attached it to the clock and line. At night he connected it with the circuit, and at each hour the wheel revolved and automatically sent in the dots required for "sixing."

The invention was a success, but the train despatcher soon noticed that frequently, in spite of the regularity of the report, Edison's office could not be raised even if a message were sent immediately after. An investigation followed, which revealed this ingenious device, and he received a reprimand.

A serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him soon after from Canada, although the youth could hardly be held to blame for it. Edison says: "This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman would awaken me. One night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would. I rushed out to find the signalman, but before I could find him and get the signal set the train ran past. I ran to the telegraph office, and reported that I could not hold her. The train despatcher, on the strength of my message that I would hold the train, had permitted another to leave the last station in the opposite direction. There was a lower station near the junction, where the day operator slept. I started for it on foot. The night was dark, and I fell into a culvert and was knocked senseless."

Fortunately, the two engineers saw each other approaching and stopped in time to prevent an accident. Edison, however, was summoned to the general manager's office to be tried for neglect of duty. During the trial two Englishmen called, and while they were talking with the manager the youthful operator slipped out, jumped on a freight train going to Sarnia, and was not happy until the ferry-boat from Sarnia had landed him safe on the Michigan shore.

The same winter, of 1863-64, while at Port Huron, Edison had a further opportunity of showing his ingenuity. An ice-jam had broken the telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to Sarnia, and communication was interrupted. The river is three-quarters of a mile wide, and could not be crossed on foot, nor could the cable be repaired.

Edison suggested using the steam whistle of a locomotive to give the long and short signals of the Morse code. An operator on the Sarnia shore was quick enough to understand the meaning of the strange whistling, and thus messages were sent in wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the river.

Young Edison had no inclination to return to Canada after his late experience there. He decided, however, that he would stick to telegraphy as a business, and, after a short stay at home in Port Huron, set out to find work as an operator in another city. And thus he commenced the roaming and drifting life which in the next five years took him all over the Middle States.

At this time the Civil War was in progress, and many hundreds of skilled operators were at the front with the army, engaged exclusively in government service. Consequently there was a great scarcity of telegraphers throughout all the cities and towns of the country. For this reason it was not difficult for an operator to get work wherever he might go. Thus one might gratify a desire to travel and get experience without running much risk of privation.

There were a great many others besides Edison who wandered about from city to city, working awhile in one place and drifting to another. As a rule, they were bright, happy-go-lucky fellows, full of the spirit of good comradeship, and willing to share bed, board, and pocket-money with those who might temporarily be less fortunate than themselves.

Many of them used telegraphy as a stepping-stone to better themselves in life, while others, unfortunately, became dissipated, and, becoming unreliable through drink, could not hold a position for long. Had Edison been by nature less persistent and industrious than he was, this miscellaneous companionship might have tended to wreck his career, but all through his life, from boyhood, he has been particularly abstemious and has had a contempt for the wastefulness of time, money, and health entailed by the drink habit.

Throughout this period of his life Edison, although wandering from place to place, never ceased to study, explore, and experiment. Referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that throws light on his ceaseless application. "After I became a telegraph operator," he says, "I practised for a long time to become a rapid reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning of a whole line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed reading is laborious."

During this wandering period of his life Edison made many friends, one of the earliest of whom was Milton F. Adams, who had a strange career. Of him Edison says: "Adams was one of a class of operators never satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the 'wanderlust.' After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the floor of my hall bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist, while the boarding-house itself was run on the Banting system of flesh reduction, he came to me one day and said: 'Good-by, Edison, I have got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.' And he did go. How, I never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there, and then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. He got a big torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market report bureau in Buenos Ayres. This didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong (as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran a panorama called 'Paradise Lost' in the Kaffir kraals. This didn't pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then he went to England to raise money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in New York, having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Columbia, with a power of attorney and two thousand dollars from a native of that republic, who applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley—a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams then a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him."

The first position that Edison took after leaving Canada so hurriedly was at Adrian, Michigan, and of what happened there he tells a story typical of his wanderings for several years to come.

"After leaving my first job at Stratford Junction I got a position as operator on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan, in the division superintendent's office. As usual, I took the 'night trick,' which most operators disliked, but which I preferred, as it gave me more leisure to experiment. I had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had established a little shop of my own. One day the day operator wanted to get off, and I was on duty. About nine o'clock the superintendent handed me a despatch which he said was very important, and which I must get off at once. The wire at the time was very busy, and I asked if I should break in. I got orders to do so, and, acting under those orders of the superintendent, I broke in and tried to send the despatch; but the other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten minutes. Finally I got possession of the wire and sent the message. The superintendent of telegraph, who then lived in Adrian and went to his office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union office up-town—and it was the superintendent I was really struggling with! In about twenty minutes he arrived, livid with rage, and I was discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families were socially close, so I was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a slight jar."

From Adrian Edison went to Toledo, Ohio, and secured a position at Fort Wayne, on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. This was a "day job," and he did not like it. Two months later he drifted to Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864, when for the first time he entered the employ of the Western Union Telegraph Company, with which in later years he entered into closer relationship. At this time, however, he was assigned to duty at Union Station, at a salary of seventy-five dollars a month.

He did not stay long in Indianapolis, however, leaving in February, 1865, and going from there to Cincinnati. This change was possibly caused by one of his early inventions, which has been spoken of by an expert as probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections for a repeater.

His ambition was to take "press report," which would come over the wire quite fast, but finding even after considerable practice, that he "broke" frequently, he adjusted two embossing Morse registers—one to receive the press matter and the other to repeat the dots and dashes at a lower speed, so that the message could be copied leisurely. Hence, he could not be rushed or "broken" in receiving, while he could turn out copy that was a marvel of neatness and clearness. This went well under ordinary conditions, but when an unusual pressure occurred he fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with which the reports were delivered to them. As to this device, Mr. Edison said recently: "Together we took press for several nights, my companion keeping the apparatus in adjustment and I copying. The regular press operator would go to the theater or take a nap, only finishing the report after 1 A.M. One of the newspapers complained of bad copy toward the end of the report—that is, from 1 to 3 A.M.—and requested that the operators taking the report up to 1 A.M., which were ourselves, take it all, as the copy then was perfectly unobjectionable. This led to an investigation by the manager, and the scheme was forbidden.

"This instrument many years afterward was applied by me to transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously or after any interval of time. It consisted of a disk of paper, the indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk phonograph to-day. It was this instrument which gave me the idea of the phonograph while working on the telephone."

Arriving in Cincinnati, Edison got employment in the Western Union Commercial Telegraph Department at sixty dollars per month. Here he made the acquaintance of Milton F. Adams, referred to in the preceding chapter. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says:

"I can well recall when Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about eighteen years, decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. I was twenty-one, and very dudish. He was quite thin in those days, and his nose was very prominent, giving a Napoleonic look to his face, although the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. The boys did not take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. I sympathized with him, and we became close companions. As an operator he had no superiors, and very few equals. Most of the time he was 'monkeying' with the batteries and circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance, consisting of two plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery. They were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit, and the rat departed this life, electrocuted." Shortly after Edison's arrival in Cincinnati came the close of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. One of Edison's reminiscences is interesting as showing the mechanical way in which some telegraph operators do their work. "I noticed," he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street outside a newspaper office. I called the attention of the other operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy to find the cause of the excitement. He returned in a few minutes and shouted, 'Lincoln's shot!' Instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to see which man had received the news. All the faces were blank, and every man said he had not taken a word about the shooting. 'Look over your files,' said the boss to the man handling the press stuff. For a few moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of paper containing a short account of the shooting of the President. The operator had worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without the slightest realization of its significance."

Edison's diversions in Cincinnati were characteristic of his life before and since. He read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure time experimenting. Occasionally he would indulge in some form of amusement, but this was not often. At this time he and Adams were close friends, and Mr. Adams remarks: "Edison and I were fond of tragedy. Forrest and John McCullough were playing at the National Theater, and when our capital was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in Othello and Iago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly. Aside from an occasional visit to the Loewen Garten, 'over the Rhine,' with a glass of beer and a few pretzels consumed while listening to the excellent music of a German band, the theater was the sum and substance of our innocent dissipation."

While Edison was in Cincinnati there came one day a delegation of five trade-union operators from Cleveland to form a local branch in Cincinnati. The occasion was one of great conviviality. Night came and many of the operators were away. The Cleveland wire was in special need, and Edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it all through the night and until three o'clock next morning, when he was relieved. He had been previously getting eighty dollars a month, and added to this by copying plays for a theater.

His rating was that of a "plug," or inferior operator, but having determined to become a first-class operator, he had kept up a practice of going to the office at night to take "press," acting willingly as a substitute for any operator who wanted to get off for a few hours—which often meant all night.

Thus he had been unconsciously preparing for the special ordeal which the conviviality of the trade-unionists had brought about.

Speaking of that night's work, Edison says: "My copy looked fine if viewed as a whole, as I could write a perfectly straight line across the wide sheet, which was not ruled. There were no flourishes, but the individual letters would not bear close inspection. When I missed understanding a word there was no time to think what it was, so I made an illegible one to fill in, trusting to the printers to sense it. I knew they could read anything, although Mr. Bloss, an editor of the Inquirer, made such bad copy that one of his editorials was pasted up on the notice board in the telegraph office with an offer of one dollar to any man who could 'read twenty consecutive words.' Nobody ever did it. When I got through I was too nervous to go home, and so I waited the rest of the night for the day manager, Mr. Stevens, to see what was to be the outcome of this union formation and of my efforts. He was an austere man, and I was afraid of him. I got the morning papers, which came out at 4 A.M., and the press report read perfectly, which surprised me greatly. I went to work on my regular day wire to Portsmouth, Ohio, and there was considerable excitement, but nothing was said to me, neither did Mr. Stevens examine the copy on the office hook, which I was watching with great interest. However, about 3 P.M. he went to the hook, grabbed the bunch and looked at it as a whole without examining it in detail, for which I was thankful. Then he jabbed it back on the hook, and I knew I was all right. He walked over to me, and said: 'Young man, I want you to work the Louisville wire nights; your salary will be one hundred and twenty-five dollars.' Thus I got from the plug classification to that of a 'first-class man.'"

Not long after this promotion was secured Edison started again on his wanderings. He went south, while his friend Adams went north, neither one having any difficulty in making the trip. He says: "The boys in those days had extraordinary facilities for travel. As a usual thing it was only necessary for them to board a train and tell the conductor they were operators. Then they could go as far as they liked. The number of operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere."

Edison's next stopping place was Memphis, Tennessee, where he got a position as operator. Here again he began to invent and improve on existing apparatus, with the result of being obliged once more to "move on." He tells the story as follows: "I was not the inventor of the auto-repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protégé of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans together for the first time since the close of the war, I redoubled my efforts, and at two o'clock one morning I had them speaking to each other. The office of the Memphis Avalanche was in the same building. The paper got wind of it and sent messages. A column came out in the morning about it; but when I went to the office in the afternoon to report for duty I was discharged without explanation. The superintendent would not even give me a pass to Nashville, so I had to pay my fare. I had so little money left that I nearly starved at Decatur, Alabama, and had to stay three days before going on north to Nashville. Arrived in that city, I went to the telegraph office, got money enough to buy a little solid food, and secured a pass to Louisville. I had a companion with me who was also out of a job. I arrived at Louisville on a bitterly cold day, with ice in the gutters. I was wearing a linen duster and was not much to look at, but got a position at once, working on a press wire. My traveling companion was less successful on account of his 'record.' They had a limit even in those days when the telegraph service was so demoralized."

After the Civil War was over the telegraph service was in desperate condition, and some of Mr. Edison's reminiscences of these times are quite interesting. He says: "The telegraph was still under military control, not having been turned over to the original owners, the Southern Telegraph Company. In addition to the regular force, there was an extra force of two or three operators, and some stranded ones, who were a burden to us, for board was high. One of these derelicts was a great source of worry to me personally. He would come in at all hours and either throw ink around or make a lot of noise. One night he built a fire in the grate and started to throw pistol cartridges into the flames. These would explode, and I was twice hit by the bullets, which left a black-and-blue mark. Another night he came in and got from some part of the building a lot of stationery with 'Confederate States' printed at the head. He was a fine operator, and wrote a beautiful hand. He would take a sheet of paper, write capital 'A,' and then take another sheet and make the 'A' differently; and so on through the alphabet, each time crumpling the paper up in his hand and throwing it on the floor. He would keep this up until the room was filled nearly flush with the table. Then he would quit.

"Everything at that time was 'wide open.' Disorganization reigned supreme. There was no head to anything. At night myself and a companion would go over to a gorgeously furnished faro-bank and get our midnight lunch. Everything was free. There were over twenty keno-rooms running. One of them that I visited was in a Baptist church, the man with the wheel being in the pulpit and the gamblers in the pews.

"While there, the manager of the telegraph office was arrested for something I never understood, and incarcerated in a military prison about half a mile from the office. The building was in plain sight from the office and four stories high. He was kept strictly incommunicado. One day, thinking he might be confined in a room facing the office, I put my arm out of the window and kept signaling dots and dashes by the movement of the arm. I tried this several times for two days. Finally he noticed it, and, putting his arm through the bars of the window, he established communication with me. He thus sent several messages to his friends, and was afterward set free."

Another curious story told by Edison concerns a fellow operator on night duty at Chattanooga Junction at the time he was at Memphis: "When it was reported that Hood was marching on Nashville, one night a Jew came into the office about eleven o'clock in great excitement, having heard the Hood rumor. He, being a large sutler, wanted to send a message to save his goods. The operator said it was impossible—that orders had been given to send no private messages. Then the Jew wanted to bribe my friend, who steadfastly refused, for the reason, as he told the Jew, that he might be court-martialed and shot. Finally the Jew got up to eight hundred dollars. The operator swore him to secrecy and sent the message. Now, there was no such order about private messages, and the Jew, finding it out, complained to Captain Van Duzer, chief of telegraphs, who investigated the matter, and while he would not discharge the operator, laid him off indefinitely. Van Duzer was so lenient that if an operator was to wait three days and then go and sit on the stoop of Van Duzer's office all day he would be taken back. But Van Duzer swore that if the operator had taken eight hundred dollars and sent the message at the regular rate, which was twenty-five cents, it would have been all right, as the Jew would be punished for trying to bribe a military operator; but when the operator took the eight hundred dollars and then sent the message deadhead he couldn't stand it, and he would never relent."

A third typical story of this period relates to a cipher message for General Thomas. Mr. Edison narrates it as follows: "When I was an operator in Cincinnati, working the Louisville wire nights for a time, one night a man over on the Pittsburg wire yelled out: 'D. I. cipher,' which meant that there was a cipher message from the War Department at Washington, and that it was coming, and he yelled out 'Louisville.' I started immediately to call up that place. It was just at the change of shift in the office. I could not get Louisville, and the cipher message began to come. It was taken by the operator on the other table, direct from the War Department. It was for General Thomas, at Nashville. I called for about twenty minutes and notified them that I could not get Louisville. I kept at it for about fifteen minutes longer, and notified them that there was still no answer from Louisville. They then notified the War Department that they could not get Louisville. Then we tried to get it by all kinds of roundabout ways, but in no case could anybody get them at that office. Soon a message came from the War Department to send immediately for the manager of the Cincinnati office. He was brought to the office and several messages were exchanged, the contents of which, of course, I did not know, but the matter appeared to be very serious, as they were afraid of General Hood, of the Confederate Army, who was then attempting to march on Nashville; and it was important that this cipher of about twelve hundred words or so should be got through immediately to General Thomas. I kept on calling up to twelve or one o'clock, but no Louisville. About one o'clock the operator at the Indianapolis office got hold of an operator who happened to come into his office, which had a wire which ran from Indianapolis to Louisville along the railroad. He arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message was sent through Indianapolis to this operator, who had engaged horses to carry the despatches to Louisville and find out the trouble, and get the despatches through without delay to General Thomas. In those days the telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very lax. It was found out a couple of days afterward that there were three night operators at Louisville. One of them had gone over to Jeffersonville and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg, and was in a hospital. By a remarkable coincidence another of the men had been stabbed in a keno-room, and was also in a hospital, while the third operator had gone to Cynthiana to see a man hanged and had got left by the train."