3. CHAPTER III
BOYHOOD AT PORT HURON, MICHIGAN
THE new home found by the Edison family at
Port Huron, where Alva spent his brief boyhood
before he became a telegraph operator and roamed
the whole middle West of that period, was unfortunately
destroyed by fire just after the close of the
Civil War. A smaller but perhaps more comfortable
home was then built by Edison's father on some
property he had bought at the near-by village of
Gratiot, and there his mother spent the remainder
of her life in confirmed invalidism, dying in 1871.
Hence the pictures and postal cards sold largely to
souvenir-hunters as the Port Huron home do not
actually show that in or around which the events
now referred to took place.
It has been a romance of popular biographers, based
upon the fact that Edison began his career as a
newsboy, to assume that these earlier years were
spent in poverty and privation, as indeed they usually
are by the "newsies'' who swarm and shout their
papers in our large cities. While it seems a pity to
destroy this erroneous idea, suggestive of a heroic
climb from the depths to the heights, nothing could
be further from the truth. Socially the Edison family
stood high in Port Huron at a time when there
was relatively more wealth and general activity than
to-day. The town in its pristine prime was a great
lumber centre, and hummed with the industry of
numerous sawmills. An incredible quantity of lumber
was made there yearly until the forests near-by
vanished and the industry with them. The wealth
of the community, invested largely in this business
and in allied transportation companies, was accumulated
rapidly and as freely spent during those days
of prosperity in St. Clair County, bringing with it a
high standard of domestic comfort. In all this the
Edisons shared on equal terms.
Thus, contrary to the stories that have been so
widely published, the Edisons, while not rich by any
means, were in comfortable circumstances, with a
well-stocked farm and large orchard to draw upon
also for sustenance. Samuel Edison, on moving to
Port Huron, became a dealer in grain and feed, and
gave attention to that business for many years. But
he was also active in the lumber industry in the
Saginaw district and several other things. It was
difficult for a man of such mercurial, restless
temperament to stay constant to any one occupation;
in fact, had he been less visionary he would have
been more prosperous, but might not have had a son
so gifted with insight and imagination. One instance
of the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantly
to spend time and money on projects that would not
have appealed to a man less sanguine was the
construction on his property of a wooden observation
tower over a hundred feet high, the top of which was
reached toilsomely by winding stairs, after the payment
of twenty-five cents. It is true that the tower
commanded a pretty view by land and water, but
Colonel Sellers himself might have projected this
enterprise as a possible source of steady income. At
first few visitors panted up the long flights of steps
to the breezy platform. During the first two months
Edison's father took in three dollars, and felt extremely
blue over the prospect, and to young Edison and his
relatives were left the lonely pleasures of the lookout
and the enjoyment of the telescope with which it
was equipped. But one fine day there came an excursion
from an inland town to see the lake. They
picnicked in the grove, and six hundred of them went
up the tower. After that the railroad company began
to advertise these excursions, and the receipts
each year paid for the observatory.
It might be thought that, immersed in business
and preoccupied with schemes of this character, Mr.
Edison was to blame for the neglect of his son's
education. But that was not the case. The conditions
were peculiar. It was at the Port Huron public
school that Edison received all the regular scholastic
instruction he ever enjoyed—just three months.
He might have spent the full term there, but, as
already noted, his teacher had found him "addled.''
He was always, according to his own recollection,
at the foot of the class, and had come almost to regard
himself as a dunce, while his father entertained
vague anxieties as to his stupidity. The truth of the
matter seems to be that Mrs. Edison, a teacher of uncommon
ability and force, held no very high opinion
of the average public-school methods and results, and
was both eager to undertake the instruction of her
son and ambitious for the future of a boy whom she
knew from pedagogic experience to be receptive and
thoughtful to a very unusual degree. With her he
found study easy and pleasant. The quality of culture
in that simple but refined home, as well as the
intellectual character of this youth without schooling,
may be inferred from the fact that before he
had reached the age of twelve he had read, with his
mother's help, Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, Hume's
History of England, Sears'
History of
the World, Burton's
Anatomy of Melancholy, and the
Dictionary of Sciences; and had even attempted to
struggle through Newton's
Principia, whose mathematics
were decidedly beyond both teacher and
student. Besides, Edison, like Faraday, was never
a mathematician, and has had little personal use for
arithmetic beyond that which is called "mental.''
He said once to a friend: "I can always hire some
mathematicians, but they can't hire me.'' His father,
by-the-way, always encouraged these literary tastes,
and paid him a small sum for each new book mastered.
It will be noted that fiction makes no showing
in the list; but it was not altogether excluded
from the home library, and Edison has all his life
enjoyed it, particularly the works of such writers as
Victor Hugo, after whom, because of his enthusiastic
admiration—possibly also because of his imagination—he
was nicknamed by his fellow-operators,
"Victor Hugo Edison.''
Electricity at that moment could have no allure
for a youthful mind. Crude telegraphy represented
what was known of it practically, and about that the
books read by young Edison were not redundantly
informational. Even had that not been so, the
inclinations of the boy barely ten years old were
toward chemistry, and fifty years later there is seen
no change of predilection. It sounds like heresy to
say that Edison became an electrician by chance,
but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent and
brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into
the chemical domain still has the aspect of a delightful
truant holiday. One of the earliest stories about
his boyhood relates to the incident when he induced
a lad employed in the family to swallow a large
quantity of Seidlitz powders in the belief that the
gases generated would enable him to fly. The agonies
of the victim attracted attention, and Edison's
mother marked her displeasure by an application of
the switch kept behind the old Seth Thomas "grandfather
clock.'' The disastrous result of this experiment
did not discourage Edison at all, as he attributed
failure to the lad rather than to the motive
power. In the cellar of the Edison homestead young
Alva soon accumulated a chemical outfit, constituting
the first in a long series of laboratories. The word
"laboratory'' had always been associated with
alchemists in the past, but as with "filament'' this
untutored stripling applied an iconoclastic practicability
to it long before he realized the significance of
the new departure. Goethe, in his legend of Faust,
shows the traditional or conventional philosopher in
his laboratory, an aged, tottering, gray-bearded
investigator, who only becomes youthful upon diabolical
intervention, and would stay senile without
it. In the Edison laboratory no such weird transformation
has been necessary, for the philosopher had
youth, fiery energy, and a grimly practical determination
that would submit to no denial of the goal
of something of real benefit to mankind. Edison and
Faust are indeed the extremes of philosophic thought
and accomplishment.
The home at Port Huron thus saw the first Edison
laboratory. The boy began experimenting when he
was about ten or eleven years of age. He got a copy
of Parker's School Philosophy, an elementary book on
physics, and about every experiment in it he tried.
Young Alva, or "Al,'' as he was called, thus early
displayed his great passion for chemistry, and in the
cellar of the house he collected no fewer than two
hundred bottles, gleaned in baskets from all parts of
the town. These were arranged carefully on shelves
and all labelled "Poison,'' so that no one else would
handle or disturb them. They contained the chemicals
with which he was constantly experimenting.
To others this diversion was both mysterious and
meaningless, but he had soon become familiar with
all the chemicals obtainable at the local drug stores,
and had tested to his satisfaction many of the statements
encountered in his scientific reading. Edison
has said that sometimes he has wondered how it was
he did not become an analytical chemist instead of
concentrating on electricity, for which he had at first
no great inclination.
Deprived of the use of a large part of her cellar,
tiring of the "mess'' always to be found there, and
somewhat fearful of results, his mother once told the
boy to clear everything out and restore order. The
thought of losing all his possessions was the cause
of so much ardent distress that his mother relented,
but insisted that he must get a lock and key, and
keep the embryonic laboratory closed up all the time
except when he was there. This was done. From
such work came an early familiarity with the nature
of electrical batteries and the production of current
from them. Apparently the greater part of his spare
time was spent in the cellar, for he did not share to
any extent in the sports of the boys of the
neighborhood, his chum and chief companion, Michael
Oates, being a lad of Dutch origin, many years older,
who did chores around the house, and who could be
recruited as a general utility Friday for the experiments
of this young explorer—such as that with the
Seidlitz powders.
Such pursuits as these consumed the scant pocket-money
of the boy very rapidly. He was not in regular
attendance at school, and had read all the books
within reach. It was thus he turned newsboy, overcoming
the reluctance of his parents, particularly
that of his mother, by pointing out that he could by
this means earn all he wanted for his experiments
and get fresh reading in the shape of papers and
magazines free of charge. Besides, his leisure hours
in Detroit he would be able to spend at the public
library. He applied (in 1859) for the privilege of
selling newspapers on the trains of the Grand Trunk
Railroad, between Port Huron and Detroit, and obtained
the concession after a short delay, during
which he made an essay in his task of selling newspapers.
Edison had, as a fact, already had some commercial
experience from the age of eleven. The ten acres of
the reservation offered an excellent opportunity for
truck-farming, and the versatile head of the family
could not avoid trying his luck in this branch of
work. A large "market garden'' was laid out, in
which Edison worked pretty steadily with the help of
the Dutch boy, Michael Oates—he of the flying
experiment. These boys had a horse and small wagon
intrusted to them, and every morning in the season
they would load up with onions, lettuce, peas, etc.,
and go through the town.
As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison
in one year from this source. The boy was indefatigable
but not altogether charmed with agriculture.
"After a while I tired of this work, as hoeing
corn in a hot sun is unattractive, and I did not
wonder that it had built up cities. Soon the Grand
Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port
Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, and thence to
Detroit, at about the same time the War of the
Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of persistence
I got permission from my mother to go on the
local train as a newsboy. The local train from Port
Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles,
left at 7 A.M. and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After
being on the train for several months, I started two
stores in Port Huron—one for periodicals, and the
other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season.
These were attended by two boys who shared in the
profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the
boy in charge could not be trusted. The vegetable
store I kept up for nearly a year. After the railroad
had been opened a short time, they put on an express
which left Detroit in the morning and returned in
the evening. I received permission to put a newsboy
on this train. Connected with this train was
a car, one part for baggage and the other part for
U. S. mail, but for a long time it was not used. Every
morning I had two large baskets of vegetables from
the Detroit market loaded in the mail-car and sent
to Port Huron, where the boy would take them to
the store. They were much better than those grown
locally, and sold readily. I never was asked to pay
freight, and to this day cannot explain why, except
that I was so small and industrious, and the nerve to
appropriate a U. S. mail-car to do a free freight business
was so monumental. However, I kept this up
for a long time, and in addition bought butter from
the farmers along the line, and an immense amount
of blackberries in the season. I bought wholesale
and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the
engineers and trainmen to have the benefit of the
discount. After a while there was a daily immigrant
train put on. This train generally had from seven
to ten coaches filled always with Norwegians, all
bound for Iowa and Minnesota. On these trains I
employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and stick
candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper
sales became very profitable, and I gave up the vegetable
store.''
The hours of this occupation were long, but the
work was not particularly heavy, and Edison soon
found opportunity for his favorite avocation—chemical
experimentation. His train left Port Huron at
7 A.M., and made its southward trip to Detroit in
about three hours. This gave a stay in that city
from 10 A.M. until the late afternoon, when the train
left, arriving at Port Huron about 9.30 P.M. The
train was made up of three coaches—baggage, smoking,
and ordinary passenger or "ladies.'' The baggage-car
was divided into three compartments—one
for trunks and packages, one for the mail, and one for
smoking. In those days no use was made of the
smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation,
and it was turned over to young Edison, who not only
kept papers there and his stock of goods as a "candy
butcher,'' but soon had it equipped with an extraordinary
variety of apparatus. There was plenty of
leisure on the two daily runs, even for an industrious
boy, and thus he found time to transfer his laboratory
from the cellar and re-establish it on the train.
His earnings were also excellent—so good, in fact,
that eight or ten dollars a day were often taken in,
and one dollar went every day to his mother. Thus
supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other
profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. And
spent it was, for with access to Detroit and its large
stores, where he bought his supplies, and to the public
library, where he could quench his thirst for technical
information, Edison gave up all his spare time
and money to chemistry. Surely the country could
have presented at that moment no more striking example
of the passionate pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties than this newsboy, barely fourteen years
of age, with his jars and test-tubes installed on a
railway baggage-car.
Nor did this amazing equipment stop at batteries
and bottles. The same little space a few feet square
was soon converted by this precocious youth into a
newspaper office. The outbreak of the Civil War
gave a great stimulus to the demand for all newspapers,
noticing which he became ambitious to publish
a local journal of his own, devoted to the news
of that section of the Grand Trunk road. A small
printing-press that had been used for hotel bills of
fare was picked up in Detroit, and type was also
bought, some of it being placed on the train so that
composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one
so mechanical in his tastes as Edison, it was quite
easy to learn the rudiments of the printing art, and
thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which
he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and
newsdealer. Only one or two copies of this journal
are now discoverable, but its appearance can be
judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The
thing was indeed well done as the work of a youth
shown by the date to be less than fifteen years old.
The literary style is good, there are only a few trivial
slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what
would be interesting news and gossip. The price was
three cents a copy, or eight cents a month for regular
subscribers, and the circulation ran up to over
four hundred copies an issue. This was by no means
the result of mere public curiosity, but attested the
value of the sheet as a genuine newspaper, to which
many persons in the railroad service along the line
were willing contributors. Indeed, with the aid of
the railway telegraph, Edison was often able to print
late news of importance, of local origin, that the distant
regular papers like those of Detroit, which he
handled as a newsboy, could not get. It is no wonder
that this clever little sheet received the approval
and patronage of the English engineer Stephenson
when inspecting the Grand Trunk system, and was
noted by no less distinguished a contemporary than
the
London Times as the first newspaper in the world
to be printed on a train in motion. The youthful
proprietor sometimes cleared as much as twenty to
thirty dollars a month from this unique journalistic
enterprise.
But all this extra work required attention, and
Edison solved the difficulty of attending also to the
newsboy business by the employment of a young
friend, whom he trained and treated liberally as an
understudy. There was often plenty of work for
both in the early days of the war, when the news of
battle caused intense excitement and large sales of
papers. Edison, with native shrewdness already so
strikingly displayed, would telegraph the station
agents and get them to bulletin the event of the day
at the front, so that when each station was reached
there were eager purchasers waiting. He recalls in
particular the sensation caused by the great battle
of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in April, 1862, in
which both Grant and Sherman were engaged, in
which Johnston died, and in which there was a ghastly
total of 25,000 killed and wounded.
In describing his enterprising action that day, Edison
says that when he reached Detroit the bulletin-boards
of the newspaper offices were surrounded with
dense crowds, which read awestricken the news that
there were 60,000 killed and wounded, and that the
result was uncertain. "I knew that if the same
excitement was attained at the various small towns
along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale
of papers would be great. I then conceived the idea
of telegraphing the news ahead, went to the operator
in the depot, and by giving him Harper's Weekly and
some other papers for three months, he agreed to
telegraph to all the stations the matter on the bulletin-board.
I hurriedly copied it, and he sent it, requesting
the agents to display it on the blackboards
used for stating the arrival and departure of trains. I
decided that instead of the usual one hundred papers
I could sell one thousand; but not having sufficient
money to purchase that number, I determined in my
desperation to see the editor himself and get credit.
The great paper at that time was the Detroit Free
Press. I walked into the office marked "Editorial''
and told a young man that I wanted to see the editor
on important business—important to me, anyway,
I was taken into an office where there were two men,
and I stated what I had done about telegraphing,
and that I wanted a thousand papers, but only had
money for three hundred, and I wanted credit. One
of the men refused it, but the other told the first
spokesman to let me have them. This man, I afterward
learned, was Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently
founded the Chicago Times, and became celebrated in
the newspaper world. By the aid of another boy I
lugged the papers to the train and started folding
them. The first station, called Utica, was a small
one where I generally sold two papers. I saw a
crowd ahead on the platform, and thought it some
excursion, but the moment I landed there was a rush
for me; then I realized that the telegraph was a great
invention. I sold thirty-five papers there. The next
station was Mount Clemens, now a watering-place,
but then a town of about one thousand. I usually
sold six to eight papers there. I decided that if I
found a corresponding crowd there, the only thing
to do to correct my lack of judgment in not getting
more papers was to raise the price from five cents to
ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the price. At
the various towns there were corresponding crowds.
It had been my practice at Port Huron to jump from
the train at a point about one-fourth of a mile from
the station, where the train generally slackened
speed. I had drawn several loads of sand to this
point to jump on, and had become quite expert. The
little Dutch boy with the horse met me at this point.
When the wagon approached the outskirts of the
town I was met by a large crowd. I then yelled:
`Twenty-five cents apiece, gentlemen! I haven't
enough to go around!' I sold all out, and made what
to me then was an immense sum of money.''
Such episodes as this added materially to his income,
but did not necessarily increase his savings,
for he was then, as now, an utter spendthrift so long
as some new apparatus or supplies for experiment
could be had. In fact, the laboratory on wheels soon
became crowded with such equipment, most costly
chemicals were bought on the instalment plan, and
Fresenius'
Qualitative Analysis served as a basis for
ceaseless testing and study. George Pullman, who
then had a small shop at Detroit and was working
on his sleeping-car, made Edison a lot of wooden
apparatus for his chemicals, to the boy's delight.
Unfortunately a sudden change came, fraught with
disaster. The train, running one day at thirty miles
an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown
suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent
lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of
phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the
floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and
the boy, in dismay, was still trying to quench the
blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered Scotchman,
who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to
the scene with water and saved his car. On the arrival
at Mount Clemens station, its next stop, Edison
and his entire outfit, laboratory, printing-plant, and
all, were promptly ejected by the enraged conductor,
and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform,
tearful and indignant in the midst of his beloved
but ruined possessions. It was lynch law of a
kind; but in view of the responsibility, this action of
the conductor lay well within his rights and duties.
It was through this incident that Edison acquired
the deafness that has persisted all through his life,
a severe box on the ears from the scorched and angry
conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity.
Although this deafness would be regarded as a great
affliction by most people, and has brought in its train
other serious troubles, Mr. Edison has always regarded
it philosophically, and said about it recently:
"This deafness has been of great advantage to me
in various ways. When in a telegraph office, I could
only hear the instrument directly on the table at
which I sat, and unlike the other operators, I was not
bothered by the other instruments. Again, in
experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve the
transmitter so I could hear it. This made the telephone
commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver
of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter
commercially. It was the same with the phonograph.
The great defect of that instrument was the
rendering of the overtones in music, and the hissing
consonants in speech. I worked over one year,
twenty hours a day' Sundays and all, to get the word
`specie ' perfectly recorded and reproduced on the
phonograph. When this was done I knew that
everything else could be done which was a fact.
Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway
is as quiet to me as a country village is to a
person with normal hearing.''
Saddened but not wholly discouraged, Edison soon
reconstituted his laboratory and printing-office at
home, although on the part of the family there was
some fear and objection after this episode, on the score
of fire. But Edison promised not to bring in anything
of a dangerous nature. He did not cease the
publication of the Weekly Herald. On the contrary,
he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded
by the "printer's devil'' in the office of the
Port Huron Commercial to change the character of
his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the name
of
Paul Pry, a happy designation for this or kindred
ventures in the domain of society journalism. No
copies of
Paul Pry can now be found, but it is
known that its style was distinctly personal, that
gossip was its specialty, and that no small offence
was given to the people whose peculiarities or peccadilloes
were discussed in a frank and breezy style by
the two boys. In one instance the resentment of
the victim of such unsought publicity was so intense
he laid hands on Edison and pitched the startled
young editor into the St. Clair River. The name of
this violator of the freedom of the press was thereafter
excluded studiously from the columns of
Paul
Pry, and the incident may have been one of those
which soon caused the abandonment of the paper.
Edison had great zest in this work, and but for the
strong influences in other directions would probably
have continued in the newspaper field, in which he
was, beyond question, the youngest publisher and
editor of the day.
Before leaving this period of his career, it is to be
noted that it gave Edison many favorable opportunities.
In Detroit he could spend frequent hours
in the public library, and it is matter of record that
he began his liberal acquaintance with its contents
by grappling bravely with a certain section and trying
to read it through consecutively, shelf by shelf,
regardless of subject. In a way this is curiously
suggestive of the earnest, energetic method of "frontal
attack'' with which the inventor has since addressed
himself to so many problems in the arts and sciences.
The Grand Trunk Railroad machine-shops at Port
Huron were a great attraction to the boy, who appears
to have spent a good deal of his time there. He who
was to have much to do with the evolution of the
modern electric locomotive was fascinated by the
mechanism of the steam locomotive; and whenever
he could get the chance Edison rode in the cab with
the engineer of his train. He became thoroughly
familiar with the intricacies of fire-box, boiler, valves,
levers, and gears, and liked nothing better than to
handle the locomotive himself during the run. On
one trip, when the engineer lay asleep while his eager
substitute piloted the train, the boiler "primed,''
and a deluge overwhelmed the young driver, who
stuck to his post till the run and the ordeal were
ended. Possibly this helped to spoil a locomotive
engineer, but went to make a great master of the new
motive power. "Steam is half an Englishman,'' said
Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday
electricity is half an American. Edison's own
account of the incident is very laughable: "The engine
was one of a number leased to the Grand Trunk by
the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass
bands all over, the woodwork beautifully painted,
and everything highly polished, which was the custom
up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt
stopped it on his roads. After running about fifteen
miles the fireman couldn't keep his eyes open (this
event followed an all-night dance of the trainmen's
fraternal organization), and he agreed to permit me
to run the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed
to about twelve miles an hour, and brought the
train of seven cars to her destination at the Grand
Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which
was very much out of the ordinary. I was very much
worried about the water, and I knew that if it got
low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn't gone
twenty miles before black damp mud blew out of the
stack and covered every part of the engine, including
myself. I was about to awaken the fireman to find
out the cause of this when it stopped. Then I approached
a station where the fireman always went out
to the cowcatcher, opened the oil-cup on the steam-chest,
and poured oil in. I started to carry out the
procedure when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam
rushed out with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking
me off the engine. I succeeded in closing the oil-cup
and got back in the cab, and made up my mind that
she would pull through without oil. I learned afterward
that the engineer always shut off steam when
the fireman went out to oil. This point I failed to
notice. My powers of observation were very much improved
after this occurrence. Just before I reached
the junction another outpour of black mud occurred,
and the whole engine was a sight—so much so that
when I pulled into the yard everybody turned to see
it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason of the
mud was that I carried so much water it passed over
into the stack, and this washed out all the accumulated
soot.''
One afternoon about a week before Christmas Edison's
train jumped the track near Utica, a station
on the line. Four old Michigan Central cars with
rotten sills collapsed in the ditch and went all to
pieces, distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies
all over the track and the vicinity. Hating to see so
much waste, Edison tried to save all he could by eating
it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had
the time of his life with me in this connection.''
An absurd incident described by Edison throws a
vivid light on the free-and-easy condition of early railroad
travel and on the Southern extravagance of the
time. "In 1860, just before the war broke out there
came to the train one afternoon, in Detroit, two fine-looking
young men accompanied by a colored servant.
They bought tickets for Port Huron, the terminal point
for the train. After leaving the junction just outside
of Detroit, I brought in the evening papers. When I
came opposite the two young men, one of them said:
`Boy, what have you got?' I said: `Papers.' `All
right.' He took them and threw them out of the
window, and, turning to the colored man, said:
`Nicodemus, pay this boy.' I told Nicodemus the
amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me. The
passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction.
I returned with the illustrated papers and
magazines. These were seized and thrown out of
the window, and I was told to get my money of
Nicodemus. I then returned with all the old magazines
and novels I had not been able to sell, thinking
perhaps this would be too much for them. I was
small and thin, and the layer reached above my head,
and was all I could possibly carry. I had prepared a
list, and knew the amount in case they bit again.
When I opened the door, all the passengers roared
with laughter. I walked right up to the young men.
One asked me what I had. I said `Magazines and
novels.' He promptly threw them out of the window,
and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with
cracked hickory nuts, then pop-corn balls, and, finally,
molasses candy. All went out of the window. I felt
like Alexander the Great!—I had no more chance! I
had sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk,
which was about the size of a carpenter's chest, and
started to pull this from the baggage-car to the
passenger-car. It was almost too much for my
strength, but at last I got it in front of those men.
I pulled off my coat, shoes, and hat, and laid them
on the chest. Then he asked: `What have you got,
boy?' I said: `Everything, sir, that I can spare that is
for sale.' The passengers fairly jumped with laughter.
Nicodemus paid me $27 for this last sale, and threw
the whole out of the door in the rear of the car. These
men were from the South, and I have always retained
a soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman.''
While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request
came to him one day to go to the office of E. B. Ward
& Company, at that time the largest owners of steamboats
on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest
boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message
taken to another captain who lived about fourteen
miles from Ridgeway station on the railroad. This
captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and
had cleared part of it. Edison was offered $15 by
Mr. Ward to go and fetch him, but as it was a wild
country and would be dark, Edison stood out for
$25, so that he could get the companionship of another
lad. The terms were agreed to. Edison arrived
at Ridgeway at 8.30 P.M., when it was raining and as
dark as ink. Getting another boy with difficulty to
volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black
night. The two boys carried lanterns, but the
road was a rough path through dense forest. The
country was wild, and it was a usual occurrence to
see deer, bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides
of houses to dry. Edison had read about bears, but
couldn't remember whether they were day or night
prowlers. The farther they went the more apprehensive
they became, and every stump in the ravished
forest looked like a bear. The other lad proposed
seeking safety up a tree, but Edison demurred on
the plea that bears could climb, and that the message
must be delivered that night to enable the captain to
catch the morning train. First one lantern went
out, then the other. "We leaned up against a tree
and cried. I thought if I ever got out of that scrape
alive I would know more about the habits of animals
and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of
mischance when I undertook an enterprise. However,
the intense darkness dilated the pupils of our
eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and we could
just see at times the outlines of the road. Finally,
just as a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered
the captain's yard and delivered the message. In
my whole life I never spent such a night of horror
as this, but I got a good lesson.''
An amusing incident of this period is told by Edison.
"When I was a boy,'' he says, "the Prince of Wales,
the late King Edward, came to Canada (1860). Great
preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian town
opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself,
went over to see the affair. The town was draped
in flags most profusely, and carpets were laid on the
cross-walks for the prince to walk on. There were
arches, etc. A stand was built raised above the general
level, where the prince was to be received by the
mayor. Seeing all these preparations, my idea of
a prince was very high; but when he did arrive I
mistook the Duke of Newcastle for him, the duke
being a fine-looking man. I soon saw that I was mistaken:
that the prince was a young stripling, and did
not meet expectations. Several of us expressed our
belief that a prince wasn't much, after all, and said
that we were thoroughly disappointed. For this one
boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck boys attacked
the Yankee boys, and we were all badly licked. I,
myself, got a black eye. That has always prejudiced
me against that kind of ceremonial and folly.'' It is
certainly interesting to note that in later years the
prince for whom Edison endured the ignominy of a
black eye made generous compensation in a graceful
letter accompanying the gold Albert Medal awarded
by the Royal Society of Arts.
Another incident of the period is as follows: "After
selling papers in Port Huron, which was often not
reached until about 9.30 at night, I seldom got home
before 11.00 or 11.30. About half-way home from the
station and the town, and within twenty-five feet of
the road in a dense wood, was a soldiers' graveyard
where three hundred soldiers were buried, due to a
cholera epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot,
near by, many years previously. At first we used
to shut our eyes and run the horse past this graveyard,
and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart
would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder
that I haven't some valvular disease of that organ.
But soon this running of the horse became monotonous,
and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely
disappeared from my system. I was in the
condition of Sam Houston, the pioneer and founder
of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston
lived some distance from the town and generally went
home late at night, having to pass through a dark
cypress swamp over a corduroy road. One night, to
test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself
behind a tree and enveloped himself in a sheet. He
confronted Houston suddenly, and Sam stopped and
said: `If you are a man, you can't hurt me. If you
are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. And if you are
the devil, come home with me; I married your sister!' ''
It is not to be inferred, however, from some of
the preceding statements that the boy was of an
exclusively studious bent of mind. He had then, as
now, the keen enjoyment of a joke, and no particular
aversion to the practical form. An incident of the
time is in point. "After the breaking out of the war
there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered at
Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary
line of our house. Nearly every night we would
hear a call, such as `Corporal of the Guard, No. 1.'
This would be repeated from sentry to sentry until
it reached the barracks, when Corporal of the Guard,
No. 1, would come and see what was wanted. I and
the little Dutch boy, after returning from the town
after selling our papers, thought we would take a
hand at military affairs. So one night, when it was
very dark, I shouted for Corporal of the Guard, No. 1.
The second sentry, thinking it was the terminal
sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so
on. This brought the corporal along the half mile,
only to find that he was fooled. We tried him three
nights; but the third night they were watching, and
caught the little Dutch boy, took him to the lock-up
at the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to
the house. I rushed for the cellar. In one small
apartment there were two barrels of potatoes and a
third one nearly empty. I poured these remnants
into the other barrels, sat down, and pulled the barrel
over my head, bottom up. The soldiers had awakened
my father, and they were seaching for me with
candles and lanterns. The corporal was absolutely
certain I came into the cellar, and couldn't see how I
could have gotten out, and wanted to know from
my father if there was no secret hiding-place. On
assurance of my father, who said that there was not,
he said it was most extraordinary. I was glad when
they left, as I was cramped, and the potatoes were
rotten that had been in the barrel and violently
offensive. The next morning I was found in bed,
and received a good switching on the legs from my
father, the first and only one I ever received from
him, although my mother kept a switch behind the
old Seth Thomas clock that had the bark worn off.
My mother's ideas and mine differed at times,
especially when I got experimenting and mussed up
things. The Dutch boy was released next morning.''