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“Were you there long?”

“Only a winter. If it’s incident you want, I can tell you one of that time. The place where I was and Sarnia, the American town, were cut off from telegraph and other means of communication by the storms until I got at a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had to do it again and again, but eventually they understood it over the water and answered in the same way.”

According to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was successively in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati, New Orleans and Louisville. He lived in the free-and-easy atmosphere of the tramp operators—a boon companion with them, yet absolutely refusing to join in the dissipations to which they were addicted. So highly esteemed was he for his honesty that it was the custom of his colleagues, when a spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a more than usually hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather the worse for wear, and knocked the treasurer down on his refusal to deliver the trust money; the other depositors, we are glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly tippler a sound thrashing.

“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.

“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and materials for experiments.”

“You believe that an excellent way to succeed?”

“Well, it helped me greatly to future success.”

“What was your next invention?” I inquired.

“An automatic telegraph recorder—a machine which enabled me to record dispatches at leisure, and send them off as fast as needed.”

“How did you come to hit upon that?”

“Well, at the time, I was in such straits that I had to walk from Memphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station they offered me a place. I had perfected a style of handwriting which would allow me to take legibly from the wire, long hand, forty-seven and even fifty-four words a minute, but I was only a moderately rapid sender. I had to do something to help me on that side, and so I thought out that little device.”

Later, he pointed out an article by one of his biographers, in which a paragraph, referring to this Louisville period, says:—

“True to his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around him a laboratory, printing office and machine shop. He took press reports during his whole stay, including, on one occasion, the Presidential message, by Andrew Johnson, and this at one sitting, from 3:30 P. M. to 4:30 A. M.

“He then paragraphed the matter he had received over the wires, so that printers had exactly three lines each, thus enabling them to set up a column in two or three minutes’ time. For this, he was allowed all the exchanges he desired, and the Louisville press gave him a state dinner.”

“How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability?” I questioned.

“I didn’t manage,” said the Wizard. “Some things I did created comment. A device that I invented which utilized one submarine cable for two circuits, caused considerable talk, and the Franklin telegraph office of Boston gave me a position.”

It is related of this, Mr. Edison’s first trip east, that he came with no ready money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues were tempted by his “hayseed” appearance to “salt” him, as professional slang terms the process of giving a receiver matter faster than he can record it. For this purpose, the new man was assigned to a wire manipulated by a New York operator famous for his speed. But there was no fun at all. Notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker was in the game and was doing his most speedy clip, Edison wrote out the long message accurately, and, when he realized the situation, was soon firing taunts over the wire at the sender’s slowness.