THOMAS A. EDISON

The mind can not conceive what man will do in the

Twentieth Century with his chained lightning.

--_Thomas A. Edison_

[Illustration: THOMAS A. EDISON

_Photogravure from drawing by Gaspard_]

Some years ago, a law was passed out in Ohio, making any

man ineligible to act as a magistrate who had not studied law and been

duly admitted to the bar. Men who had not studied law were deemed lacking

in the sense of justice. This law was designed purely for one man--Samuel

M. Jones of Toledo. Was ever a Jones so honored before?

In Athens, of old, a law was once passed declaring that every man, either

of whose parents was an alien, was not a citizen and therefore ineligible

to hold office.

This law was aimed at the head of one man--Themistocles.

"And so you are an alien?" was the taunting remark flung at the mother of

Themistocles.

And the Greek matron proudly answered, "Yes, I am an alien--but my son is

Themistocles."

Down at Lilly Dale the other day, a woman told me that she had talked

with the mother of Edison, and the spirit-voice had said: "It is true I

was a Canadian schoolteacher, and this at a time when very few women

taught, but I am the mother of him you call Thomas A. Edison. I studied

and read and wrote and in degree I educated myself. I had great

ambition--I thirsted to know, to do, to become. But I was hampered and

chained in an uncongenial atmosphere. My body struggled with its bonds,

so that I grew weak, worried, sick, and died, leaving my boy to struggle

his way alone. My only regret at death was the thought that I was leaving

my boy. I thought that through my marriage I had killed my

career--sacrificed myself. But my boy became heir to all my hunger for

knowledge, and he has accomplished what I dimly dreamed. He has made

plain what I only guessed. From my position here I have whispered secrets

to him that only the freed spirits knew. I once thought my life was a

failure, but now I know that the word 'failure' is a term used only by

foolish mortals. In the universal sense there is no such thing as

failure."

Just here it seems to me that some one once said that we get no mind

without brain. But we had here the brain of the medium, otherwise this

alleged message from the spirit realm would not be ours. So we will not

now tarry to discuss psychic phenomena, but go on to other things. But

the woman from Lilly Dale said something, just the same.

* * * * *

Edison was born at the little village of Milan, Ohio,

which lies six miles from Norwalk on the road between Cleveland and

Toledo.

On the breaking out of the Civil War the boy was fourteen years old. His

parents had moved to Sarnia, Canada, and then across to Port Huron.

Young Edison used to ride up and down from Detroit on the passenger-boats

and sell newspapers. His standing with the Detroit "Free Press," backed

up by his good-cheer and readiness to help the passengers with their

babies and bundles, gave him free passage on all railroads and

steamboat-lines.

There was a public library at Detroit where any one could read, but books

could not be taken away.

All Edison's spare time was spent at the library, which to him was a

gold-mine. All his mother's books had been sold, stolen or given away.

And ahoy there, all you folks who have books! Do you not know what books

are to a child hungry for truth, that has no books?

Of course you do not!

Books to a boy like young Edison are treasures-trove, in which is stored

the learning of all great and good and wise who have ever lived.

And the boy has to read, and read for a decade, in order to find that

books are not much after all.

When Edison saw the inside of that library and was told he could read any

or all of the books, he said, "If you please, Mister, I'll begin here."

And he tackled the first shelf, mentally deciding that he would go

through the books ten feet at a time.

A little later he bought at an auction fifty volumes of the "North

American Review," and moving the books up to his home at Port Huron

proceeded to read them.

The war was on--papers sold for ten cents each and business was good.

Edison was making money--and saving it. He only plunged on books.

Over at Mount Clemens, at the Springs, folks congregated, and there young

Edison took weekly trips selling papers.

On one such visit he rescued the little son of the station-agent from in

front of a moving train. In gratitude, the man took the boy to his house

and told him he must make it his home while in Mount Clemens; and then

after supper the youngster went down to the station; and what was more,

the station-agent took him in behind the ticket-window, where the

telegraph-instrument clicked off dots and dashes on a long strip of

paper.

Edison looked on with open mouth.

"Would you like to become a telegraph-operator?" asked the agent.

"Sure!" was the reply.

Already the boy had read up on the subject in his library of the "North

American Review," and he really knew the history of the thing better than

did the agent.

Edison was now a newsboy on the Grand Trunk, and he arranged his route so

as to spend every other night at Mount Clemens.

In a few months he could handle the key about as well as the

station-agent.

About this time the ice had carried out the telegraph-line between Port

Huron and Sarnia. The telegraph people were in sore straits. Edison

happened along and said to the local operator, "Come out here, Bill, on

this switch-engine and we'll fix things!" By short snorts of the whistle

for dots and long ones for dashes, they soon caught the ear of the

operator on the other side. He answered back, "What t'ell is the matter

with you fellows?" And Edison and the other operator roared with

laughter, so that the engineer thought their think-boxes needed

re-babbitting.

And that scheme of telegraphy with a steam-whistle was Edison's first

invention.

* * * * *

Instead of going to college Edison started a newspaper--a

kind of amateur affair, in which he himself wrote editorials, news-items

and advertisements--this when he was seventeen years old.

The best way to become a skilled writer is to write; and if there is a

better way to learn than by doing, the world has not yet discovered it.

Also, if there is a finer advantage for a youth who would be a financier

than to have a shiftless father, it has not been recorded.

When nineteen, Edison had two thousand dollars in cash--more money than

his father had ever seen at any one time.

The Grand Trunk folks found that their ex-trainboy could operate, and so

they called on him to help them out, up and down the line. Then the

Western Union wanted extra good men, and young Edison was given double

pay to go to New Orleans, where there was a pitiful dearth of operators,

the Southern operators being mostly dead, and Northern men not caring to

live in the South.

So Edison traveled North and South and East and West, gathering gear. He

had studied the science of telegraphy closely enough to see that it could

be improved upon. One message at a time for one wire was absurd--why not

two, or four, and why not send messages both ways at once!

It was the general idea then that electricity traveled: Edison knew

better--electricity merely rendered the wire sensitive.

Edison was getting a reputation among his associates. He had read

everything, and when his key was not busy, there was in his hand a copy

of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall."

He wrote a hand like copperplate and could "take" as fast as the best

could send. And when it came to "sending," he had made the pride of

Chicago cry quits.

The Western Union had need of a specially good man at Albany while the

Legislature was in session, and Edison was sent there. He took the key

and never looked at the clock--he cleaned up the stuff. He sat glued to

his chair for ten hours, straight.

At one time, the line suddenly became blocked between Albany and New

York. The manager was in distress, and after exhausting all known

expedients went to Edison. The lanky youth called up a friend of his in

Pittsburgh and ordered that New York give the Pittsburgh man the Albany

wire. "Feel your way up the river until you find me," were the orders.

Edison started feeling his way down the river.

In twenty minutes he called to the manager, "The break is two miles below

Poughkeepsie--I've ordered the section-boss at Poughkeepsie to take a

repairer on his handcar and go and fix it!"

Of course, this plain telegraph-operator had no right to order out a

section-boss; but nevertheless he did it. He shouldered responsibility

like Tom Potter of the C., B. & Q.

Not long after the Albany experience, Edison was in New York, not looking

for work as some say, but nosing around Wall Street investigating the

"Laws Automatic Ticker." The machine he was looking at suddenly stopped,

and this blocked all the tickers on the line. An expert was sent for, but

he could not start it.

"I'll fix it," said a tall, awkward volunteer, the same which was Edison.

History is not yet clear as to whether Edison had not originally "fixed"

it, and Edison so far has not confessed.

And there being no one else to start the machine, Edison was given a

chance, and soon the tickers were going again. This gave him an

introduction to the stock-ticker folks, and the Western Union people he

already knew.

This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, and Edison was then twenty-three

years old.

He studied out how stock-reporting could be bettered and invented a plan

which he duly patented, and then laid his scheme before the Western Union

managers.

A stock company was formed, and young Edison, aged twenty-four, was paid

exactly forty thousand dollars for his patent, and retained by the

Company as Electrical Adviser at three hundred dollars a month.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was twenty-seven, he had

perfected his duplex telegraph apparatus and had a factory turning out

telegraph-instruments and appliances at Newark, New Jersey, where three

hundred men were employed.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, the year of the Centennial Exposition,

Edison told the Exposition Managers that if they would wait a year or so

he would light their show with electricity.

He moved to the then secluded spot of Menlo Park to devote himself to

experiments, spending an even hundred thousand dollars in equipment as a

starter. Results followed fast, and soon we had the incandescent lamp,

trolley-car, electric pen and many other inventions. It was on the night

of October the Twenty-third, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, that Edison

first turned the current through an incandescent burner and got the

perfect light. He sat and looked at the soft, mild, beautiful light and

laughed a joyous peal of laughter that was heard in the adjoining rooms.

"We've got it, boys!" he cried, and the boys, a dozen of them, came

tumbling in. Arguments started as to how long it would last. One said an

hour. "Twenty-four hours," said Edison. They all vowed they would watch

it without sleep until the carbon film was destroyed and the light went

out. It lasted just forty hours.

Around Edison grew up a group of great workers--proud to be called

"Edison Men"--and some of these went out and made for themselves names

and fortunes.

Edison was born in Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven. Consequently, at this

writing he is sixty-three years old. He is big and looks awkward, because

his dusty-gray clothes do not fit, and he walks with a slight stoop. When

he wants clothes he telephones for them. His necktie is worn by the right

oblique, his iron-gray hair is combed by the wind. On his cherubic face

usually sits a half-quizzical, pleased smile, that fades into a look

plaintive and very gentle. The face is that of a man who has borne

burdens and known sorrow, of one who has overcome only after mighty

effort. I was going to say that Edison looks like a Roman Emperor, but I

recall that no Roman Emperor deserves to rank with him--not even Julius

Cæsar! The face is that of Napoleon at Saint Helena, unsubdued.

The predominant characteristics of the man are his faith, hope,

good-cheer and courage. But at all times his humor is apt to be near the

surface.

Had Edison been as keen a businessman as Rockefeller, and kept his own in

his own hands, he would today be as rich as Rockefeller.

But Edison is worth, oh, say, two million dollars, and that is all any

man should be worth--it is all he needs. Yet there are at least a hundred

men in the world today, far richer than Edison, who have made their

fortunes wholly and solely by appropriating his ideas.

Edison has trusted people, and some of them have taken advantage of his

great, big, generous, boyish spirit to do him grievous wrong. But the

nearest I ever heard him come to making a complaint was when he said to

me, "Fra Elbertus, you never wrote but one really true thing!"

"Well, what was that, Mr. Edison?"

"You said, 'There is one thing worse than to be deceived by men, and that

is to distrust them.' Now people say I have been successful, and so I

have, in degree, and it has been through trusting men. There are a few

fellows who always know just what I am doing--I confide in them--I

explain things to them just to straighten the matter out in my own mind."

But of the men who have used Edison's money and ideas, who have made it a

life business to study his patents and then use them, evading the law,

not a word!

From Eighteen Hundred Seventy to Eighteen Hundred Ninety, Edison secured

over nine hundred patents, or at the rate of one patent every ten days.

Very few indeed of these patents ever brought him any direct return, and

now his plan is to invent and keep the matter a secret in his "family."

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it," he said to me. "You

patent a thing and the other fellow starts even with you. Keep it to

yourself and you have the machinery going before the other fellow is

awake. Patents may protect some things, and still others they only

advertise. Up in Buffalo you have a great lawyer who says he can drive a

coach and four through any will that was ever made--and I guess he can.

All good lawyers know how to break wills and contracts, and there are now

specialists who secure goodly fees for busting patents. If you have an

idea, go ahead and invent a way to use it and keep your process secret."

* * * * *

The Edison factories at West Orange cover a space of about

thirty acres, all fenced in with high pickets and barb-wire. Over two

thousand people are employed inside that fence. There are guards at the

gates, and the would-be visitor is challenged as if he were an enemy. If

you want to see any particular person, you do not go in and see him--he

comes to you and you sit in a place like the visitors' dock at Sing-Sing.

With me it was different: I had a note that made the gates swing wide.

However, one gatekeeper scrutinized the note and scrutinized me, and then

went back into a maze of buildings for advice. When he came back, the

General Manager was with him and was reproving him. In a voice full of

defense the County Down watchman said: "Ah, now, and how did I know but

that it was a forgery? And anyhow, I'd never let in a man what looks like

that, even if he had an order from Bill Taft."

The Edison factories, all enclosed in the high fence and under guard,

include four separate and distinct corporations, each with its own set of

offices. Edison himself owns a controlling interest in each corporation,

and the rest of the stock is owned by the managers or "family." With his

few trusted helpers he is most liberal. Not only do they draw goodly

salaries, but they have an interest in the profits that is no small

matter.

The secrets of the place are protected by having each workman stick

right to one thing and work in one room. No running around is

allowed--each employee goes to a certain place and remains there all day.

To be found elsewhere is a misdemeanor, and while spies at the Edison

factory are not shot, they have been known to disappear into space with

great velocity.

To make amends for the close restrictions on workers, an extra wage is

paid and the eight-hour day prevails, so help is never wanting.

Ninety-nine workers out of a hundred want their wages, and nothing else.

Promotion, advancement and education are things that never occur to them.

But for the few that have the stuff in them, Edison is always on the

lookout. His place is really a college, for to know the man is an

education. He radiates good-cheer and his animation is catching.

To a woman who wanted him to write a motto for her son, Edison wrote,

"Never look at the clock!" The argument is plain--get the thing done.

And around the Edison laboratory there is no use of looking at the clock,

for none of them runs. That is the classic joke of the place. Years ago

Edison expressed his contempt for the man who watched the clock, and now

every Christmas his office family take up a collection and buy him a

clock, and present it with great ceremony. He replies in a speech on the

nebular hypothesis and all are very happy. One year the present assumed

the form of an Ingersoll Dollar Watch, which the Wizard showed to me

with great pride. In the stockade is a beautiful library building and

here you see clocks galore, some of which must have cost a thousand

dollars a piece, all silent. One clock had a neatly printed card

attached, "Don't look at this clock--it has stopped." And another, "You

may look at this clock, for you can't stop it!" It was already stopped.

One very elegant clock had a solid block of wood where the works should

have been, but the face and golden hands were all complete.

However, one clock was running, with a tick needlessly loud, but this

clock had no hands.

The Edison Library is a gigantic affair, with two balconies and

bookstacks limitless.

The intent was to have a scientific library right at hand that would

compass the knowledge of the world. The Laboratory is quite as complete,

for in it is every chemical substance known to man, all labeled,

classified and indexed. Seemingly, Edison is the most careless,

indifferent and slipshod of men, but the real fact is that such a

thorough business general the world has seldom seen. If he wants, say,

the "Electrical Review" for March, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-One, he hands

a boy a slip of paper and the book is in his hands in five minutes.

Edison of all men understands that knowledge consists in having a clerk

who can quickly find the thing. In his hands the card-index has reached

perfection.

Edison has no private office, and his desk in the great library has not

had a letter written on it since Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. "I hate to

disturb the mice," he said as he pointed it out indifferently.

He arrives at the stockade early--often by seven o'clock, and makes his

way direct to the Laboratory, which stands in the center of the campus.

All around are high factory buildings, vibrating with the suppressed roar

and hum of industry.

In the Laboratory, Edison works, secure and free from interruption unless

he invites it. Much of his time is spent in the Chemical Building, a low,

one-story structure, lighted from the top. It has a cement floor and very

simple furniture, the shelves and tables being mostly of iron. "We are

always prepared for fires and explosions here," said Edison in

half-apology for the barrenness of the rooms.

The place is a maze of retorts, kettles, tubes, siphons and tiny brass

machinery. In the midst of the mess stood two old-fashioned

armchairs--both sacred to Edison. One he sits in, and the other is for

his feet, his books, pads and paper.

Here he sits and thinks, reads or muses or tells stories or shuffles

about with his hands in his pockets. Edison is a man of infinite leisure.

He has the faculty of throwing details upon others. At his elbow, shod in

sneakers silent, is always a stenographer. Then there is a bookkeeper who

does nothing but record the result of every experiment, and these

experiments are going on constantly, attended to by half a dozen quiet

and alert men, who work like automatons. "I have tried a million schemes

that will not work--I know everything that is no good. I work by

elimination," says Edison.

When hot on the trail of an idea he may work here for three days and

nights without going home, and his wife is good enough and great enough

to leave him absolutely to himself. In a little room in the corner of the

Laboratory is a little iron cot and three gray army blankets. He can

sleep at any time, and half an hour's rest will enable him to go on. When

he can't quite catch the idea, he closes up his brain-cells for ten

minutes and sleeps, then up and after it again.

Mrs. Edison occasionally sends meals down for the Wizard when he is on

the trail of a thought and does not want to take time to go home.

One day the dinner arrived when Edison was just putting salt on the tail

of an idea. There was no time to eat, but it occurred to the inventor

that if he would just quit thinking for ten minutes and sleep, he could

awaken with enough brain-power to throw the lariat successfully. So he

just leaned back, put his feet in the other chair and went to sleep.

The General Manager came in and saw the dinner on the table and Edison

sleeping, so he just sat down and began to eat the dinner. He ate it all,

and tiptoed out.

Edison slept twenty minutes, awoke, looked at the empty dishes, pulled

down his vest, took out his regular after-dinner cigar, lighted it and

smoked away in sweet satisfaction, fully believing that he had had his

dinner; and even after the General Manager had come in and offered to bet

him a dollar he hadn't, he was still of the same mind.

This spirit of sly joking fills the place, set afloat by the master

himself. Edison dearly loves a joke, and will quit work any time to hear

one. It is the five minutes' sleep and the good laugh that keep his brain

from becoming a hotbox--he gets his rest!

"When do you take your vacation, Mr. Edison?" a lady asked him.

"Election night every November," was the reply. And this is literally

true, for on that night there is a special wire run into the Orange

Clubhouse, and Edison takes the key and sits there until daylight taking

the returns, writing them out carefully in that copperplate Western Union

hand. He is as careful about his handwriting now as if he were writing

out train-orders.

"If I wanted to live a hundred years I would use neither tobacco nor

coffee," said Edison as we sat at lunch. "But you see I'd rather get a

little really good work done than live long and do nothing to speak of.

And so I spur what I am pleased to call my mind, at times with coffee and

a good cigar--just pass the matches, thank you! Some day some fellow will

invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of

this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if

some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work

in electricity--you know, I never claimed to have invented

electricity--that is a campaign lie--nail it!"

"Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the

same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to

concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned

way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is

dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn't fetch up anywhere. My

task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little

lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven't really found out

how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have

just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This

scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of--it is so

wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of

Prometheus was a baboon."

"When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes

ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should

utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form

of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy."

"Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the

front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the

property.

"There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in

unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces.

Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed.

"Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I'd

tell you about that, but I don't want to bore you. Of course, I know that

nothing is more interesting to the public than a good lie. You see, I

have been a newspaperman myself--used to run a newspaper--in fact,

Veritas and Old Subscriber once took exception to one of my editorials

and threw me into the Detroit River--that is where I got my little

deafness--what's that? No, I did not say my deftness--I got that in

another way. But about lies, you have heard that one about my smoking

big, black cigars! Well, the story is that the boys in the office used to

steal my cigars, and so I got a cigarmaker to make me up a box that

looked just like my favorite brand, only I had 'em filled with hemp,

horsehair and a touch of asafetida. Then I just left the box where the

boys would be sure to dip into it; but it seems the cigarman put them on,

and so they just put that box into my own private stock and I smoked the

fumigators and never knew the difference.

"That whole story is a pernicious malrepresentation invented by the enemy

of mankind in order to throw obloquy over a virtuous old

telegraph-operator--brand it!"

Witness, therefore, that I have branded it, forevermore!

* * * * *

Once upon a day I wrote an article on Alexander Humboldt.

And in that article among other things I said, "This world of ours, round

like an orange and slightly flattened at the Poles, has produced but five

educated men."

And ironical ladies and gents from all parts of the United States wrote

me on postal cards, begging that I should name the other four. Let us

leave the cynics to their little pleasantries, and make our appeal to

people who think.

Education means evolution, development, growth. Education is comparative,

for there is no fixed standard--all men know more than some men, and some

men know more than some other men. "Every man I meet is my master in some

particular," said Emerson. But there are five men in history who had

minds so developed, and evolved beyond the rest of mankind so far, that

they form a class by themselves, and deserve to be called Educated Men.

The men I have in mind were the following: Pericles, Builder of Athens.

Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, and the world's first naturalist.

Leonardo, the all-round man--the man who could do more things, and do

them well, than any other man who every lived.

Sir Isaac Newton, the mathematician, who analyzed light and discovered

the law of gravitation.

Alexander von Humboldt, explorer and naturalist, who compassed the entire

scientific knowledge of the world, issued his books in deluxe limited

editions at his own expense, and sold them for three thousand dollars a

set.

Newton and Humboldt each wore a seven and three-fourths hat. Leonardo and

Aristotle went untaped, but Pericles had a head so high and so big that

he looked like a caricature, and Aristophanes, a nice man who lived at

the same time, said that the head of Pericles looked like a pumpkin that

had been sat upon. All the busts of Pericles represent him wearing a

helmet--this to avoid what the artists thought an abnormality, the

average Greek having a round, smooth chucklehead like that of a Bowery

bartender.

America has produced two men who stand out so far beyond the rest of

mankind that they form a class by themselves: Benjamin Franklin and

Thomas A. Edison.

Franklin wore a seven and a half hat; Edison wears a seven and

three-fourths.

The difference in men is the difference in brain-power. And while size

does not always token quality, yet size and surface are necessary to get

power, and there is no record of a man with a six and a half head ever

making a ripple on the intellectual sea. Without the cells you get no

mind, and if mind exists without the cells, it has not yet been proven.

The brain is a storage-battery made up of millions of minute cells.

The weight of an average man's brain is forty-nine ounces. Now,

Humboldt's brain weighed fifty-six ounces, and Newton's and Franklin's

weighed fifty-seven. Let us hope the autopsist will not have a chance to

weigh Edison's brain for many years, but when he does the mark will

register fifty-seven ounces.

An orang-utan weighs about the same as a man, but its brain weighs only a

pound, against three pounds for a man. Give a gorilla a brain weighing

fifty ounces, and he would be a Methodist Presiding Elder. Give him a

brain the same size of Edison's, say fifty-seven ounces, and instead of

spending life in hunting for snakes and heaving cocoanuts at monkeys as

respectable gorillas are wont, he would be weighing the world in scales

of his own invention and making, and measuring the distances of the

stars.

Pericles was taught by the gentle Anaxagoras, who gave all his money to

the State in order that he might be free. The State reciprocated by

cutting off his head, for republics are always ungrateful.

Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and worked his way through college,

sifting ashes, washing windows and sweeping sidewalks.

Leonardo was self-taught and gathered knowledge as a bee gathers honey,

although honey isn't honey until the bee digests it.

Sir Isaac Newton was a Cambridge man. He held the office of Master of the

Mint, and to relieve himself of the charge of atheism he anticipated the

enemy and wrote a book on the Hebrew Prophets, which gave the scientists

the laugh on him, but made his position with the State secure. Newton is

the only man herein mentioned who knew anything about theology, all the

others being "infidels" in their day, devoting themselves strictly to

this world. Humboldt was taught by the "natural method," and never took a

college degree.

Franklin was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, and Edison's

Alma Mater is the same.

There is one special characteristic manifested by the Seven Educated men

I have named--good-cheer, a great welling sense of happiness! They were

all good animals: they gloried in life; they loved the men and women who

were still on earth; they feasted on the good things in life; breathed

deeply; slept soundly and did not bother about the future. Their working

motto was, "One world at a time."

They were all able to laugh.

Genius is a great fund of joyousness.

Each and all of these men influenced the world profoundly. We are

different people because they lived. Every house, school, library and

workshop in Christendom is touched by their presence.

All are dead but Edison, yet their influence can never die. And no one in

the list has influenced civilization so profoundly as Edison. You can not

look out of a window in any city in Europe or America without beholding

the influence of his thought. You may say that the science of

electricity has gone past him, but all the Sons of Jove have built on

him.

He gave us the electric light and the electric car and pointed the way to

the telephone--three things that have revolutionized society. As Athens

at her height was the Age of Pericles, so will our time be known as the

Age of Edison.

SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GOOD MEN AND GREAT,"

BEING VOLUME ONE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND

ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS AND

PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA,

ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII