Читать книгу Little Visits with Great Americans - Эндрю Карнеги - Страница 16

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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.