Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 November 1878 — EDISON. [ARTICLE]

EDISON.

Something: About His Boyhood. At 12 he began the world—as trainboy on the Grand Trunk railroad, of Canada and Central Michigan. To one who has noticed the precocious selfpossession, the flippant conversational powers and the sharp financial dealings of the young persons who for the most part abound in it, it does not seem a profession for the cultivation of a spirit of quiet research, or the most thorough acquirement of the sciences and arts. But it is fair to presume that Master Ed-, ison at this time had no very comprehensive scheme of development prepared. It offered the most available means of a livelihood. He went into it Avith such a Avill that in course of time he became an employer of labor, having four assistants under him for the disposal of his wares. He is not averse to recur to the humors of this part of liis life. “Were you one of the kind of trainboys,” he has been asked, “avlio sell figs in boxes Avith bottoms half ail inch thick ?” “If I recollect right,” he replied, with a merry tAvinkle, “the bottoms of my boxes were a good inch.” There exists a daguerreotype of the train-boy of this epoch. It shows the future celebrity as a chubby-faced fellow in a glazed cap apd muffler, Avitli papers under liis arm. The face has an expansive smile—not to put too fine a point upon it, a grin. Yet there is something honest and a little deprecating in it, instead of impudence. He Avas, as Avill be shown, an eccentricity among train-boys, and was, no doubt, sensible of it. He looks like a felloAv whose glazed cap a brakeman Avould touzle over his eyes in passing, Avhile thinking a good deal of him, all the same. His peculiarity consisted in having established in turn, in the disused smoking-section of a springless old bag-gage-car which served him as headquarters for his papers, fruits and vegetable iA'ory—tAvo industries little known to train-boys in general. He surrounded himself Avith a quantity of bottles and some retort stands —made in the railroad shops in exchange for papers—procured a copy of “Fresenius’ Qualitative Analysis,” and, while the car bumped rudely along, conducted the experiments of a chemist. By hanging about the office of the Detroit Free Press, in some spare hours, he had acquired an idea of printing. At a favorable opportunity he purchased from tlie office 300 pounds of old type, and to the laboratory a printing office was added. It seems to have been by a peculiar, good-natured, lianging-arounil process of his gavu, with his eyes extremely Avide op< i' and sure of Avliat they Avanted to sue, that his practical information on so many useful subjects was obtained. He learned something of mechanics and the practical mastery of a locomotive in the railroad shops, and acquired an idea of the powers of electricity from telegraph operators. With his printing office he published a paper—the Grand Trunk Herald. It Avas a Aveekly 12x16 inches, and Avas noticed by the London Times, to which a copy had been slioAvn by some traveler, as the only journal in the world printed on a railway train. The impressions Avere taken by the most primitive of all means, that of pressing the sheets upon the type with the hands, and were on but one side of the paper. Baggage-men and brakemen contributed the literary contents. In 1862, during the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, the enterprising manager conceived tlie idea of telegraphing on tlie head-lines of his exciting news and having them pasted on bulletin boards at the small country stations. The result was a profitable venture, and the first awakening of interest on liis part in the art of telegraphing, in which he was destined to play such a remarkable part. During t? is time lie continued bis reading Avith unabated industry. His train carried him into Detroit, where there Avere advantages he had never enjoyed before. An indication of his thirst for knowledge, of a naive ignoring of enormous difficulties, and of tlie completeness Avith which the shaping of his career was in his own hands, is found in a project formed by him to read through the whole public library. There was no one to tell him that all of human knowledge may be found in a certain moderate number of volumes, nor to point out to him approximately what they are. Each book Avas in his vieAV a distinct part of the great domain, and he meant to lose none of it. He began Avith the solid treatises on a dusty lower shelf and actually read, in the accomplishment of liis heroic purpose, fifteen feet in a line. He omitted no book and skipped nothing in the book. The list contained, among others, Newton’s “Principia,” Ure’s scientific dictionaries, and Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” —W. H. Bishop, in Scribner for November.