Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1878 — The Edison Rat-Trap. [ARTICLE]

The Edison Rat-Trap.

Yesterday a strange man, carrying what appeared to be a small coffin, paused in front of the Oil Exchange. He was a sad-faced man, and his black suit glistened in the sunlight like an armor. He put down his strange burden, and bowed to the men standing around. Then, casting his eyes up at the building, he began, “Gentlemen, I congratulate you. You have reared here a structure which is second to none in the country. When you shall have gone to that bourne from whence no traveler returns,” and ho glanced sorrowfully at the little coffin, “ this beautiful building will remain a monument to your energy and enterprise. Bnt, gentlemen, poor as 1 may seem, great as is the contrast between us, I have that in this little box before me,” and he tapped the coffin reverently with his cane, “which I would not exchange for all the wealth of your oil regions. It is, gentlemen,” and he began to unscrew the lid, while the crowd involuntarily shrank back, “it is, gentlemen, a rattrap which I am introducing for Mr.. Edison, of Menlo Park.” The crowd closed up again. “It is his latest invention, and, as he says himself, his best. I have handled a great many rattraps in my life, and I can safely say that this one knocks the socks off of ail of them. Don’t crowd np too close till I show it to yon, ” and be took off the top and exposed a box with a lot of apartments communicating with each other by little doors, windows and openings of one kind and another. “ The great inventor Darned this the ‘ Citizens’ savings rat-trap,’ because it operates on the same principle as a savings bank. You see, the rat smells the cheese and enters by the front door,” and the trapman indicated tho aperture with his cane; “thence in quest of the cheese, which is a sort of ignis fatuus, through this door, which admits him to parlor A, or the Cashier’s room. This door closes behind him, and he passes thence to parlor B, or the Directors’ room; this door closes behind him, as before, and he proceeds to parlor C, or the President’s private apartment. By an ingenious arrangement, the closing of each little door removes the cheese into the next room—in this way always keeping it one room in advance of the rat that seeks it—until the last room is reached (parlor D), when it is swung nois dessly to the front apartment for the allurement of another victim. Once inside of a door no rat can get out, but rats on the outside can get in, and do get k>, until the trap is full.” “ What’s ali that got to do with a savings bank ?” asked a receiving teller who was in the crowd. “Everything, my dear friend, everything,” replied the strange min; “because, you see, when the trap is full it closes—liabilities large; assets nothiug.”—Oil City Derrick.