hardly a large city but has built a handsome house down in the slums
which offers help and comfort to the poor. But Hull House is the leading
settlement house in the United States.
Jane Addams still dresses simply. She does not care to have the best
clothes in the neighborhood, or jewels, or luxuries for herself. She
does not believe in talking a great deal about what she intends to do
later on. She has found that the world needs busy workers more than
ready talkers. She is a busy, good woman who has done noble work in
America. She is still getting up very early in the morning, and I fancy
that when she is asked why she rests so little, she gives the same
polite answer that her father heard: "Because I have so much to do!"
LUTHER BURBANK
A few years ago every one who went to California tried to see Luther
Burbank, for the newspapers and magazines were filled with stories of
the wonderful things he was doing. Plenty of men make houses,
automobiles, ships to go on the water, and ships that sail through the
air, clothing, and toys, but this man makes new fruits and flowers. It
is not an easy thing to do, and Mr. Burbank has found that he needs all
his strength and time for his work. So now, at his small farm at Santa
Rosa and at his big farm at Sebastopol, strangers find a sign like this:
+-----------------------------+
| ALL VISITORS ARE LIMITED |
| TO FIVE MINUTES EACH UNLESS |
| BY SPECIAL APPOINTMENT |
+-----------------------------+
And during the six busiest months of the year, from April to October,
other signs tell that it will cost ten dollars to stay one hour. These
signs are not put up because Mr. Burbank is cross or rude, but because
these strange new plants have to be watched as carefully as tiny babies.
He can't leave them for visitors.
Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts. When he was a baby
in his cradle, his mother and sisters found that nothing made him dimple
and crow with delight like a flower. They noticed, too, that he never
crushed a flower, and once, when a petal fell off a flower he was
holding, he tried for hours with his tiny fingers to put it back in
place. And when he was big enough to run about the house and yard,
instead of carrying a toy or a dog or cat in his arms, he was usually
hugging a potted plant of some kind, for as people saw his great love
for such things, they were on the lookout for cunning plants for the
dear little Burbank boy.
One day Luther was trudging across the yard, clasping a small
lobster-cactus in an earthen pot, when he stumbled and fell, breaking
the pot and plant. He cried for days over the accident.
At school, Luther was a delight to his teachers. There were few black
marks against his name. He liked all his lessons, but the books that
told him about birds, trees, and flowers pleased him most.
When Luther was old enough to go to Leicester Academy, he had for his
dearest chum a boy cousin who knew Agassiz, and who through him became
interested in science. This boy wanted to study about rocks and caves,
rivers and fish, while Luther watched the birds that perched on the
rocks and the trees that grew near the rivers. But the two spent many
weeks tramping over the country together.
Luther worked several summers in a factory near his home. He was quick
to understand machinery and invented a machine that saved the manager of
the factory a great deal of money, for it would do the work of six men.
Luther's family and friends were sure he would be an inventor. But he
himself wanted to raise flowers.
Luther saved a little money and started a vegetable garden. He tried
experiments with the potato plants until he raised an entirely
different kind than had ever grown before. Of course this made him want
to experiment with other plants, and he stayed in the hot sun so much
looking after them that he had a bad sunstroke. This led to his going to
a climate where he might live outdoors during more months of the year,
and where he would not be apt to have such attacks.
When Luther reached California, he had only a few dollars, rather poor
health, and was among strangers. He tried to get work on farms or
orchards, because he wanted to experiment with vines and vegetables. But
if he got work, it was usually for only a few days at a time. Finally he
was obliged to work on a chicken ranch, where the only place for him to
sleep was in one of the chicken coops. The pay was small, and he did not
have as much or as good food as some pet dogs get. But all the time he
was saying to himself: "If I can have patience, I shall yet get a farm
of my own."
By and by he was hired to look after a small nursery (this is what a big
plantation of trees is called). He would have been perfectly happy
there if sleeping in a damp room had not given him a fever. He was poor,
sick, and almost alone, but not quite, for a very poor woman, who had
only the milk of one cow to sell, found him one day lying on a bed of
straw, and ever after that insisted on his drinking a pint of her milk
each day. He declared that this milk saved his life.
For some years Luther took one odd job after another until he saved
enough to buy a small piece of ground. Then he was soon raising plants
and making new varieties. He read and studied and tried experiments.
Sometimes he failed, and even when he succeeded there was a good deal of
fun made of him. Some people thought Luther Burbank was crazy. It seemed
such an odd thing for a man to think of doing--making a fruit or a
flower that had not been heard of or dreamed of before! But he did not
pay any heed to all this sneering. He worked harder than ever. And
before long, the first new plants were in great demand, so that by
selling them he got money to buy more land. To-day some of the largest
orchards in California are growing from one of Luther Burbank's
experiments. And our country is millions of dollars richer from his new
kinds of plums, potatoes, and prunes.
Mr. Burbank bought acres of land, hired armies of workmen, denied
himself pleasures and visitors, and did not mind how tired he was, so
long as old plants were being made better, or new plants were being
created. Pretty soon letters began to come from Russia, France, Japan,
England, South America, and Africa, asking for some Burbank plants and
some Burbank advice as to their care.
Mr. Burbank has made more new forms of plant life than any other man. He
has worked on two thousand, five hundred species of plants. Besides
making flowers more beautiful and of sweeter fragrance, he has done
wonders with the cactus plants that grow on prairies. Once all these
plants were covered with thorns and prickles, so that the cattle who bit
into them rushed away with bleeding mouths, feeling much the same as we
should if we put our teeth into a stalk of celery and bit on to
fish-hooks and needles. Well, Mr. Burbank has changed all that. The
fruit of some of his cactus plants is almost as sweet as oranges; the
thorns are all gone so that the stalks are fine food for cattle; some of
the leaves make good pickles or greens; and the small plants are used
for hedges. So the plants that were in old times a pest and nuisance are
to-day, thanks to Mr. Burbank, a comfort to the world.
Luther Burbank is a handsome, courteous gentleman, fond of fun, of young
people and children, but you can see how busy he has been in the odd
science of making new plants and trees, and as he has plans for a great
many more, you will also understand why he really has to have those
signs put up around his farm at Santa Rosa.
EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL
On a lovely Sunday morning, some years ago, when all the sweet June
smells came in through the open church window, an old man with silvery
white hair played such a soft, entrancing little air on the organ, as
the ushers took the weekly offering, that the listeners held their
breath. "What is it?" they whispered. "What is the dainty thing called?"
They asked the organist at the close of the service, and he answered:
"That was MacDowell's 'To a Wild Rose'--and MacDowell is a composer of
whom America may well be proud."
Edward MacDowell was born in New York. He had his first piano lessons
when he was eight years old. But as soon as he had learned the notes,
his mother noticed that it was not exercises that he played, but merry,
rollicking airs. When she asked him where he found them, he replied: "In
my head and heart." He was even then composing music of his own. His
mother did not run to the neighbors at once, crying "My son is a
genius." Instead of that she thought: "Dear me, I am afraid Edward will
be a Jack-of-all-trades and good at none, for he writes beautiful
stories and poems and draws exact likenesses of people. What in the
world shall we do with him?"
All his music teachers said it would be wicked not to keep him at the
piano. But that was easier said than done. When, at the age of fifteen,
he went with his mother to Paris, he passed fine examinations for
entrance to the French Conservatory and learned the French language in
no time, so as to understand the teachers and lecturers. But he was
still apt to forget that he went to his classes to listen and spent much
time sketching the faces of teacher or pupils on the margin of his
note-book. MacDowell was busy one day, over a picture of a teacher who
had a large, queerly shaped nose, when the teacher, seeing that the boy
was paying no attention to the lesson, darted to his seat and seized the
sketch. MacDowell was frightened and imagined he would be punished. But
the teacher was not a bit angry when he saw how true the lines were. He
asked to keep the paper and a few days later called on Mrs. MacDowell.
"Madam," he said, "I have shown the picture your son drew of me to an
artist of the School of Fine Arts, and this gentleman is so sure Edward
is meant for a portrait painter that he offers to pay all his expenses
for three years and to give him lessons free of charge." This was a
grand chance for a poor boy. Mrs. MacDowell did not want to make any
mistake. She looked at the teacher a minute and asked: "What would _you_
do?"
"Why, I am sure he will make a famous piano player."
There was the same old tiresome question: if Edward could do three or
four things well, how was any one to know which he might do best?
Finally the matter was left to Edward. After a good many days of
thinking, he decided his life should be given to music. Art was given
up, and Edward promised to waste no more time on his drawing. But he
was a great reader and liked good books to the end of his days.
After study of the piano in Paris, MacDowell went to Frankfort for two
years. He had many pupils there, and to one of them he was married.
The young married couple crossed the ocean and stayed in Boston long
enough for MacDowell to give some concerts. His fingers were like velvet
on the keys of the piano, and every one declared he must take part in a
grand American concert that was to be given during the Paris Exposition.
He did as he was asked, and the French people waved their handkerchiefs
and cried in their language: "Good for the little American!" The French
people invited him everywhere and begged him to remain in Paris, but
from first to last Edward MacDowell was a loyal American, and he
returned to Boston, where for eight years he played in concerts, took
pupils, and best of all wrote much of the music which makes Americans so
proud of him. He became a professor of music in Columbia College, and
his piano pieces were played the world over.
Many men who write music try to give it a style like some old Italian or
German composer, but MacDowell's music does not remind one of any
German, Italian, or French writers; it is just itself--it is MacDowell.
Some of his music is heavy and grand, but more of it is delicate. It was
wonderful to hear MacDowell himself play "To a Wild Rose." A friend who
knew how much the composer liked that said once: "Mac, something
dreadful happened a few weeks ago. I heard your 'Wild Rose' played at a
high school graduation, on a high school piano, by a high school
girl--awful!"
MacDowell laughed and answered: "I suppose she pulled it up by the
roots, didn't she?"
MacDowell loved outdoor life, and after he bought a farm at Peterboro,
New Hampshire, he built a log cabin way off in the woods, had a grand
piano carried there, and in the quiet of that forest wrote some of his
sweetest musical sketches.
The names of MacDowell's compositions show he loved life under the sky.
There are "The Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", "From a Log Cabin", and
single titles like "The Eagle", "A Water Lily", and "The Bars at
Sunset."
MacDowell worked too steadily and died when he was quite young, but he
had written enough music to be remembered as a great American composer.
He said any man who wanted to write music that described his country
must love that country so well that he would put into his notes what the
nation had put into its life. He felt that America was a happy, brave,
hopeful nation, and he tried to make his music show that.
MacDowell was shy and modest and was quite surprised when different
colleges made him a Doctor of Music, when great concert players meekly
asked him if they played his sonatas as he wished them played, and when
medals and jewels were sent him as gifts.
A good many studios are now built near MacDowell's log cabin in
Peterboro, and musicians and authors stay in the forest through the
summer months, liking the quiet spot and hoping the sight of his log
cabin may make them work as faithfully for the glory of America as
Edward MacDowell did.
Even the French artist who wished to make a portrait painter of him must
have been glad that MacDowell clung to music, and Mrs. MacDowell found
that her Jack-of-all-trades was really master of one.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
If ever there was a busy boy, Thomas Edison, who was born in Milan,
Ohio, was one. He wanted to do everything that he saw others doing, and
more than that, he liked to contrive new ways of doing things. The
grown-up people wished he would not ask so many questions or stay always
at their elbows, watching their work. But it came out all right in the
end, these busy ways of his, for to-day he is one of the world's
greatest inventors.
Thomas was a sunny, laughing, little boy, and pretty, too, except when
he was trying to think how something was made; then he would scowl and
pucker up his mouth until you would hardly know him. He always wanted to
know how machinery worked and asked his father, or any one near by, to
explain it to him. Sometimes his father would get all tired out
answering questions, and to get rid of the little chap would say: "I
don't know." Then Thomas would stare at his father and say: "You don't
know! _Why_ don't you know?" Then, if Mr. Edison did not answer, Thomas
would perhaps run down by the water, along the tow-path for the canal.
There were shipyards by the water, and he would pick up the different
tools and ask the workmen what the name of each was, how it was used and
why it was used, and get in their way generally until they drove him
home. He built fine houses and tiny villages, with plank sidewalks, from
the bits of wood these ship-builders gave him. The belts and wheels in
the saw and grist mills pleased him. He watched them often. Once, in one
of the mills, he fell into a pile of wheat in a grain elevator and had
nearly smothered before he was found. Several times he fell into the
canal and came near drowning.
When Thomas was six years old, he watched a goose sitting on her eggs
and saw them hatch. He wanted to understand this strange thing better,
so he gathered all the goose and hen's eggs he could and made a big
nest in his father's barn. Then all of a sudden, he was missing. The
family rushed to the canal, the village, and the mills, and finally
found him sitting on the nest of eggs in the barn. He wanted to see if
he could hatch those eggs out!
The only person who did not get out of patience with Thomas was his
mother. He and she adored each other. She had been a school teacher and
was used to children. She saw that Thomas had a keen mind and was always
ready to explain things to him. When he went to school, the teacher did
not know what to make of his strange remarks and almost broke Thomas's
heart one day by telling the principal that she thought the little
Edison boy was "addled." Thomas ran home crying. He could not bear to go
again to the school, so his mother taught him at home. He had a
wonderful memory and must have paid close attention to what was said,
for he never had to be told a thing the second time. Thomas quite often
had his lessons with his mother on the piazza. They seemed so happy
that the children who went to school often wished they could study with
Mrs. Edison. She was fond of children and was apt to run down to the
gate with some cookies or apples for them.
Sunny days Thomas liked to go with his father and mother into a tower
Mr. Edison had built near the house. It was eighty feet high, and from
its top one could see the broad river and hills beyond.
At the age of nine, Thomas was more fond of reading than of playing.
When he was twelve, he got the notion in his head that it would be a
fine thing to read every book that was in the Public Library in Detroit.
He kept at it for months! But when he had read every book on the first
fifteen feet of shelves, he saw that some were very dry and stupid and
gave up his plan. After that he chose the books that told of interesting
things.
When Thomas was eleven, he felt he ought to be doing something besides
reading. He wanted to earn some money. His mother did not agree with
him, but after he had teased for whole weeks, she said: "Well, you may
try working part of each day." He sold papers and candy on the trains
running between Port Huron and Detroit. At first Mrs. Edison was very
nervous. She imagined that perhaps his train was getting wrecked, that
he had fallen under the wheels of the engine, and all sorts of horrid
things, but as he kept coming back home every night, safe and happy, she
stopped worrying. He was bright, and the men who talked and laughed with
him paid him a good deal of money for the papers and the nuts and
candies which he carried in a basket. He was a proud boy to hand over to
his mother the earnings of a week, which sometimes counted up to twenty
dollars.
Thomas was such a very busy person that the lessons he had with his
mother early in the mornings and his paper work on the train were not
enough to satisfy him, so he bought some old type, a printing-press, and
some ink rollers, and began making a little newspaper of his own. This
newspaper was only the size of a lady's pocket-handkerchief, but it was
so clever that he soon had five hundred subscribers, and he made ten
more dollars a week on that. The great English engineer, Stephenson, was
traveling on Thomas's train one day and was so pleased with the paper
that he bought a thousand copies. He said there were many newspapers
edited by grown-up men that were not one half as good. Remember about
this paper, and if ever you see Thomas Edison's beautiful home at
Orange, New Jersey, ask to look at a copy of it. Mr. Edison thinks as
much of it as of anything in the fine library.
Well, Thomas's business on the trains grew so that he had to hire four
boys to help him. Then he bought some chemicals, and in one corner of
the baggage car, in spare moments, he began trying experiments. He was
just getting hold of some pretty exciting ideas, when one day the train
ran over something rough and spilled a bottle that held phosphorus. This
set the woodwork on fire, and while poor Thomas was trying to beat out
the flames, the conductor, in a rage, threw boy, press, bottles, and all
off the train. And that was the end of the newspaper.
The next thing to interest Thomas was the system of telegraphing. He had
not lost the habit of asking questions and quizzed the operator at Mt.
Clemens, Mr. McKenzie, every chance he had. As he stood on the station
platform one day, asking Mr. McKenzie something, he noticed the
operator's little child playing on the tracks right in front of a coming
train. And that train was an express! Thomas rushed out and seized the
child just as the train almost touched his coat. Mr. McKenzie was so
grateful that he said: "Look here, I want to do something for you. Let
me teach you to be a telegraph operator." Thomas was delighted and after
that used to take four lessons a week. At the end of three months he was
an expert.
Thomas could not have learned so quickly if he had not worked very
steadily. He always put his heart and mind on whatever he was learning,
and he did not sleep more than four or five hours at night all the time
he was studying the dots and dashes that are used in sending telegraph
messages.
At the age of sixteen, Thomas Edison took his first position as
telegraph operator. He did not earn very much at this work, at first,
and usually tried to get places where he had night hours. This was so
that he would have part of the daytime to read in public libraries and
to try experiments. There were so many wonderful things to learn or to
understand in this world that it was a pity, he thought, to waste much
time in eating or sleeping.
When Thomas was twenty-two, he had made his ideas worth three hundred
dollars a month. Probably the school teacher who thought the little
Edison boy was "addled" never earned that much at any age! From that
time until now Thomas Edison's experiments have meant a fortune to him
and no end of pleasure and comfort to the world. You cannot go into a
city in the United States that is not fitted with electric
lights--_Edison_ lights. When you hear a phonograph, remember it is an
Edison invention; when you go sight-seeing in a new city, the guide of
the motor carriages will shout the names of places to you through a
megaphone,--another Edison idea. He has patents on fourteen hundred
ideas. No wonder he has had to keep busy! There is no telling how many
more patents his brain will win, for he is only sixty-seven, and that is
young in the Edison family. Thomas's great-grandfather lived to be a
hundred and four, and his grandfather lived to be a hundred and two. And
he himself is just as busy to-day as he was when he drove every one but
his mother nearly crazy with his questions. Only to-day he stays in his
workshop, getting answers to them.
He never loses his interest in telegraph matters; many of his inventions
have been along that line. In fun, he called his first girl and boy
"Dot" and "Dash." And in that fine home in New Jersey, hanging near the
funny little newspaper, is a picture of Thomas Edison when he sold
newspapers on the train and sent telegraph news about the great Civil
War to all the stations along the way. The picture shows a bright, merry
face. America's greatest inventor still laughs like a boy and takes a
day off now and then for music, fishing, and reading. But he is the
busiest man living.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The following changes have been made to the text:
Page 60: "often she forget to eat" changed to "often she forgot to eat".
Page 141: "electrics or steam train" changed to "electric or steam
train".
Page 206: "forhead" changed to "forehead".