WONDERFUL INVENTIONS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 252, 31 October 1878, Page 6

WONDERFUL INVENTIONS.

The San Francisco News Letter, in a humorous accountof Professor Edisor, inventor of the phonograph, gays: — '■ Youug Edison evinced his remarkable turu lor invention at an extraordinarily early age. Ha used to invent Qve excuses a week for playing truant, and would have been ou regular schedule time with six, but there was no school on Saturday. At the age of seven he bey an, ancordicg to the maternal Edison, to "take notice," and soou after he invented the eiuce popular practice of sitting up late on Suniay nights in parlours with the gas turned Jowd, accompanied by a photographic album, a box of curaoiol?, some cardamon seeds, and a young woman. It waa about ilih time he conceived the patent AntiBashful Sofa, the hidden machinery of which is wound up by the young lajy immediately before the arrival of the young man is such cases enacted, and by hu nlinost insensible contraction it diminishts in siza from a s^x-foot louoge to an ordinary sized arrn-ebair. The latest improvement to this admirable piece ot furniture he calls the Patent Parent Preventer. A fine strand of wire is paseel under the parlour door and connects with tha hall bannisters. This rings & small electric bell in the coat-tail pocket of the young men whenever the girl's mother conies out on the landing above to listen, and promptly exposes any attempt of the old raan to Bneak down stsits in his stocking feet — a disreputable dodge until reccentiy, we regret to say, much in vogue."