While the inventions of Thomas A. Edison keep him constantly in the
public eye, as a man in private life he is comparatively unknown. If
you should see him in his laboratory, buried deep in work, surrounded
by battalions of machines and hosts of experimental appliances, dressed
in his “shop clothes” spotted with chemicals, you would never suspect
that, just seven hundred feet away, a palatial home awaits him.
Ten years ago he was an undomesticated man. His workshop and his
chemical laboratory held such powerful sway over his mind that he was
only supremely happy when “up to his eyes” in work. Gradually, almost
insidiously, the “wizard” has been weaned away from the weaving of his
spells, and now a new and more potent power than ever before controlled
him has gained its mastery over him. This is the power of love.
Though the great inventor even now works as few men of his age and
accomplishments are in the habit of doing, the last few years have seen
a steady relaxation of his toil. The time has passed when he was wont
to lock himself in a room and work sixty hours at a stretch without
taking more than an hour’s sleep at various intervals in that time.