BOYHOOD OF EDISON, THE INVENTOR.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 76, 19 April 1879, Page 2

BOYHOOD OF EDISON, THE INVENTOR.

At twelve he began the world as trainboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada and Central Michigan. To one who has noted the precocious self-posses-sion, tho 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 tho most thorough acquirement of the sciences and arts. But it is fair to presume that Master Edison at this time had not very comprehensive scheme of development prepared. It offered the most available means of a livelihood. He went into it with such a will that in course of time he became an employor of labour, having four assistants under him for the disposal of his wares. Tie is not averse to recur to the humours of this part of his life. " Where you one of tho kind of train boy," he has been asked, " who sell figs in boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?" "If I recollect right," he replied, with a merry twinkle, " the bottoms of my boxes were a good inch." There exists a dagucrrotypo of the train boy of this epoch. It shows the future celebrity as a chubby-faced fellow in a glazed cap and muffler, with papers under his arm. Tho 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. Ho was, as wili bo shown an eocontricity among train-boys and was no doubt sensiblo of it. He looks liko a fellow whose gla/ed cap a brakeman would touzlo over his eyos in passing, while thinking a good deal of him all the same. His peculiarity consisted in having established in turn, in tho disusedsmoking section of a springlc&s old baggage car which served him as head-quarters for his papors, fruit and vegotablo ivory, two industries little known to train-boys in general. He surrounded himself with a quantity of bottles and retort stands—made in the railroad shops in exehango for papers—procured a copy of " Krescnins' Qualitative Analysis, and while the car bumped rudoly along, conducted tho experiments of a ohemist. By hanging aoout the office of the Detroit Freo Press in sonio spare hours, he acquired an idea of printing. At a favourable opportunity ho purchased from tho olfioo three hundred

pounds of old type, and to the laboratory a printing offie ■ was added. It seems to have been by a peculiar, good-uaturod, banging around process of his own, with his eyes extremely wide open and sure of what they wanted to see, that his practical information on so manv useful subjects was obtained. He learned something [of mechanics and tho praotica! mastery of a locomotive in the railroad shops, and acquired an idea of the powers of electricity from telegraph operators. With his printing olfice ne published a jiaper —the Urand Trunk Herald. It was a weekly, twelve by sixteen inches, and was noticed by the London Times, to which ft copy had been shown by some traveller, as the only journal in the world printed on a railwny train. The impressions were taken by the most primitive of ail means—that of pressing the sheets iqton the typo with the hands, and were on but one side of tho paper. Baggage-men and brakemen tontributed the literary contents. In 18G2, during the buttle of Pittsburg Landing, the enterprising manager conceived, the idea of telegraphing on the headlines 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 his sido in the art of telegraphing, in which he was destined to play such a remarkable part. During this time he continued his reading with unabated industry. His train carried him to Detroit, where there were advantages he had never enjoyed before. An indication of his thirst for knowledge, of a naive ignoring of enormous difficulties, and of the completeness with 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. Thero was irvmc to tell him that all a of human knowledge may be found in a certain moderate number of volumes, nor to point out to him approximately what they are. Each hook was, in his view, a distinct part of the great domain, and he meant to lose none of it. Ho began with the solid treatises of a dusty lower shelf, and actually read, in the accomplishment of his heroic purpose, fifteen feet iu a line. He omitted no book and skipped nothing in the hook.—Seribncr for November.