Chapter XXII (5)

“There are men born with a genius for money-making,” says Mathews. “They have the instinct of accumulation. The talent and the inclination to convert dollars into doubloons by bargains or shrewd investments are in them just as strongly marked and as uncontrollable as were the ability and the inclination of Shakespeare to produce Hamlet and Othello, of Raphael to paint his cartoons, of Beethoven to compose his symphonies, or Morse to invent an electric telegraph. As it would have been a gross dereliction of duty, a shameful perversion of gifts, had these latter disregarded the instincts of their genius and engaged in the scramble for wealth, so would a Rothschild, an Astor, and a Peabody have sinned had they done violence to their natures, and thrown their energies into channels where they would have proved dwarfs and not giants.”

The opportunity which came to young Rockefeller does not occur many times in many ages: and in a generous interpretation of his opportunity he has already invested a great deal of his earnings in permanently useful philanthropies.

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XIII

The Author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic—Her Views of Education for
Young Women

A POET, author, lecturer, wit and conversationalist, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe unites with the attributes of a tender, womanly nature—which has made her the idol of her husband and children—the sterner virtues of a reformer; the unflinching courage which dares to stand with a small minority in the cause of right; the indomitable perseverance and force of character which persist in the demand for justice in face of the determined opposition of narrow prejudice and old-time conservatism.

Although more Bostonian than the Bostonians themselves, Mrs. Howe first saw the light in New York, and has spent much of her later life at Newport. Born in 1819, in a stately mansion near the Bowling Green, then the most fashionable quarter of New York, she was the fourth child of Samuel Ward and Julia Cutler Ward, people of unusual culture, refinement, and high ideals. Mr. Ward was a man of spotless honor and business integrity; and, although not wealthy as compared with the millionaires of to-day, his fortune was ample enough to surround his wife and children with all the luxuries and refinements that the most fastidious nature could crave. Mrs. Ward possessed a rare combination of personal charms and mental gifts, which endeared her to all who had the privilege of knowing her. All too soon, the death angel came and bore away the lovely young wife and mother, then in her twenty-eighth year.

Rousing himself, with a great effort, from the grief into which the death of his wife had plunged him, Mr. Ward devoted himself to the training, and education of his children. Far in advance of his age in the matter of higher education for women he selected as the tutor of his daughters the learned Doctor Joseph Green Cogswell, with instruction to teach them the full curriculum of Harvard college.

“LITTLE MISS WARD”

The scholarly and refined atmosphere of her father’s home, which was the resort of the most distinguished men of letters of the day, was an admirable school for the development of the literary and philosophic mind of the “little Miss Ward,” as Mr. Ward’s eldest daughter had been called from childhood.

Learned even beyond advanced college graduates of to-day, an accomplished linguist, a musical amateur of great promise, the young and beautiful Miss Julia Ward, of Bond street, soon became a leader of the cultured and fashionable circle in which she moved. In the series, “Authors at Home,” by M. C. Sherwood, we get a glimpse of her, about that time, in a whimsical entry from the diary of a Miss Hamilton, written at the time of the return of Doctor Howe, from Greece, whither he had gone to fight the Turks:—

“I walked down Broadway with all the fashion and met the pretty blue stocking, Miss Julia Ward, with her admirer, Doctor Howe, just home from Europe. She had on a blue satin cloak and a white muslin dress. I looked to see if she had on blue stockings, but I think not. I suspect that her stockings were pink, and she wore low slippers, as grandmamma does. They say she dreams in Italian and quotes French verses. She sang very prettily at a party last evening. I noticed how white her hands were. Still, though attractive, the muse is not handsome.”

SHE MARRIED A REFORMER

Soon after the loss of her father, in 1839, Miss Ward paid the first of a series of visits to Boston, where she met, among other distinguished people who became life-long friends, Sarah Margaret Fuller, Horace Mann, Charles Sumner, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1843 she was married to the director of the institute for the blind, in South Boston, the physician and reformer, Doctor Samuel G. Howe, of whom Sydney Smith spoke—referring to the remarkable results attained in his education of Laura Bridgman,—as “a modern Pygmalion who has put life into a statue.” Immediately after their marriage, Doctor and Mrs. Howe sailed for Europe, making London their first stopping place. There they met many famous men and women, among them Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, Sydney Smith, Thomas Moore, the Duchess of Sutherland, John Forster, Samuel Rogers, Richard Monckton Milnes, and many others. After an extensive continental tour, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy, Doctor and Mrs. Howe returned home and took up their residence in South Boston.

One of her friends has said: “Mrs. Howe wrote leading articles from her cradle;” and it is true that at seventeen, at least, she was an anonymous but valued contributor to the _New York Magazine_, then a prominent periodical. In 1854, her first volume of poems was published. She named it “Passion Flowers,” and the Boston world of letters hailed her as a new poet. Though published anonymously, the volume at once revealed its author; and Mrs. Howe was welcomed into the poetic fraternity by such shining lights as Emerson, Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant, and Holmes. The poem by which the author will be forever enshrined in her country’s memory is, _par excellence_, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which, like Kipling’s “Recessional,” sang itself at once into the heart of the nation. As any sketch of Mrs. Howe would be incomplete without the story of the birth of this great song of America, it is here given in brief.

STORY OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC”

It was in the first year of our Civil War that Mrs. Howe, in company with her husband and friends, visited Washington. During their stay in that city, the party went to see a review of troops, which, however, was interrupted by a movement of the enemy, and had to be put off for the day. The carriage in which Mrs. Howe was seated with her friends was surrounded by armed men; and, as they rode along, she began to sing, to the great delight of the soldiers, “John Brown.” “Good for you!” shouted the boys in blue, who, with a will, took up the refrain. Mrs. Howe then began conversing with her friends on the momentous events of the hour, and expressed the strong desire she felt to write some words which might be sung to this stirring tune, adding that she feared she would never be able to do so. “She went to sleep,” says her daughter, Maude Howe Eliot, “full of thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn the next morning to find the desired verses immediately present to her mind. She sprang from her bed, and in the dim gray light found a pen, and paper, whereon she wrote, scarcely seeing them, the lines of the poem. Returning to her couch, she was soon asleep, but not until she had said to herself, ‘I like this better than anything I have ever written before.’”

“EIGHTY YEARS YOUNG”

Of Mrs. Howe it may very fittingly be said that she is eighty years young. Her blue eye retains its brightness, and her dignified carriage betokens none of the feebleness of age. Above all, her mind seems to hold, in a marvelous degree, its youthful vigor and elasticity; a fact that especially impressed me as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” expressed her views on the desirability of a college training for girls.

“The girls who go to college,” said Mrs. Howe, “are very much in request, I should say for everything,—certainly for teaching. Then, naturally, if they wish to follow literature, they have a very great advantage over those who have not had the benefit of a college course, having a liberal education to begin with.”

“Which is the greater advantage to a girl, to have talent or great perseverance?”

“In order to accomplish anything really worth doing, I think great perseverance is of the first importance. On the other hand, one cannot do a great deal without talent, while special talent without perseverance never amounts to much. I once heard Mr. Emerson say, ‘Genius without character is mere friskiness;’ and we all know of highly gifted people, who, because lacking the essential quality of perseverance, accomplish very little in the world.”

“Do you think the college girl will exercise a greater influence on modern progress and the civilization of the future than her untrained sister?”

“Oh, very much greater,” was the quick, emphatic reply. “In the first place, I think that college-bred girls are quite as likely to marry as others, and when a college girl marries, then the whole family is lifted to a higher plane, the natural result of the well-trained, cultivated mind. Mothers of old, you know, were very ignorant. Indeed, it is sad to think what few advantages they had. Of course, some of them had opportunities to study alone, but this solitary study could not accomplish for them what the colleges, with their corps of specialists and trained professors, are doing for the young women of to-day.”

THE IDEAL COLLEGE

Speaking of the advantages and disadvantages of coeducational institutions, Mrs. Howe said:—

“While there are many advantages in coeducation, there are also some dangers. The great advantage consists in the mingling of both sorts of mind, the masculine and the feminine. This gives a completeness that cannot otherwise be obtained. I have observed that when committees are made up of both men and women, we get a roundness and completeness that are lacking when the membership is composed of either sex alone; and so in college recitations, where the boys present their side and the girls theirs, we get better results. This, of course, is natural. Fortunately, so far, scandals have been very rare, if found at all, in coeducation at colleges. Many people, however, would not care to trust their children, nor would we send every girl, to such colleges; and, for this reason, I am glad that we have women’s colleges. I think, however, that, if the students are at all earnest, and have high ideals set before them, the coeducational is the ideal college; for the course in these colleges is like a great intellectual race, which arouses and stimulates all the nobler faculties.”

“What influence do you think environment has on one’s career,—on success in life?”

“What do you mean by environment?”

“Well, I mean especially the sort of people with whom one is associated; their order of mind?”

“I think it has a very important effect. If we are kept perpetually under lowering influences—lowering both morally and æsthetically,—the tendency will inevitably be to drag us down. I say æsthetically, because I think in that sense good taste is a part of good morals. You can, of course, have good taste without good morals; but with morality there is a certain feeling or measure of reserve and nicety which does not accompany good taste without good morals. You know St. Paul says: ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners.’ That is as true to-day as it ever was. We can’t always be with our equals or our superiors, however; we must take people as we find them. But we should try to be with people who stand for high things, morally and intellectually. Then, when we have to be among people of a lower grade, we can help them, because I think human nature, on the whole, desires to be elevated rather than lowered.”

“Do you think it is necessary to success in life to have a special aim?”

“I think it is a great thing to have a special aim or talent, and it is better to make one thing the leading interest in life than to run after half-a-dozen.”

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XIV

A TALK WITH EDISON

DRAMATIC INCIDENTS IN HIS EARLY LIFE

TO discover the opinion of Thomas A. Edison concerning what makes and constitutes success in life is an easy matter—if one can first discover Mr. Edison. I camped three weeks in the vicinity of Orange, N.J., awaiting the opportunity to come upon the great inventor and voice my questions. It seemed a rather hopeless and discouraging affair until he was really before me; but, truth to say, he is one of the most accessible of men, and only reluctantly allows himself to be hedged in by pressure of endless affairs.

“Mr. Edison is always glad to see any visitor,” said a gentleman who is continually with him, “except when he is hot on the trail of something he has been working for, and then it is as much as a man’s head is worth to come in on him.”

He certainly was not hot on the trail of anything on the morning when, for the tenth time, I rang at the gate in the fence which surrounds the laboratory on Valley Road, Orange. A young man appeared, who conducted me up the walk to the Edison laboratory office.

THE LIBRARY

is a place not to be passed through without thought, for, with a further store of volumes in his home, it contains one of the most costly and well-equipped scientific libraries in the world; the collection of writings on patent laws and patents, for instance, is absolutely exhaustive. It gives, at a glance, an idea of the breadth of thought and sympathy of this man who grew up with scarcely a common school education.

On the second floor, in one of the offices of the machine shop, I was asked to wait, while a grimy youth disappeared with my card, which he said he would “slip under the door of Mr. Edison’s office.”

“Curious,” I thought; “what a lord this man must be if they dare not even knock at his door!”

Thinking of this and gazing out the window, I waited until a working man, who had entered softly, came up beside me. He looked with a sort of “Well, what is it?” in his eyes, and quickly it began to come to me that the man in the sooty, oil-stained clothes was Edison himself. The working garb seemed rather incongruous, but there was no mistaking the broad forehead, with its shock of blackish hair streaked with gray. The gray eyes, too, were revelations in the way of alert comprehensiveness.

“Oh!” was all I could get out at the time.

“Want to see me?” he said, smiling in the most youthful and genial way.

“Why,—yes, certainly, to be sure,” I stammered.

He looked at me blankly.

“You’ll have to talk louder,” said an assistant who worked in another portion of the room; “he don’t hear well.”

This fact was new to me, but I raised my voice with celerity, and piped thereafter in an exceedingly shrill key. After the usual humdrum opening remarks, in which he acknowledged his age as fifty-two years, and that he was born in Erie county, O., of Dutch parentage, the family having emigrated to America in 1730, the particulars began to grow more interesting.

His great-grandfather, I learned, was a banker of high standing in New York; and, when Thomas was but a child of seven years, the family fortune suffered reverses so serious as to make it necessary that he should become a wage-earner at an unusually early age, and that the family should move from his birth-place to Michigan.

“Did you enjoy mathematics as a boy?” I asked.

“Not much,” he replied. “I tried to read Newton’s ‘Principia,’ at the age of eleven. That disgusted me with pure mathematics, and I don’t wonder now. I should not have been allowed to take up such serious work.”

“You were anxious to learn?”

“Yes, indeed, _I attempted to read through the entire Free Library at Detroit_, but other things interfered before I had done.”

A CHEMICAL NEWSBOY

“Were you a book-worm and dreamer?” I questioned.

“Not at all,” he answered, using a short, jerky method, as though he were unconsciously checking himself up. “I became a newsboy, and liked the work. Made my first coup as a newsboy in 1869.”

“What was it?” I ventured.

“I bought up on ‘futures’ a thousand copies of the _Detroit Free Press_ containing important war news,—gained a little time on my rivals, and sold the entire batch like hot cakes. The price reached twenty-five cents a paper before the end of the route,” and he laughed. “I ran the _Grand Trunk Herald_, too, at that time—a little paper I issued from the train.”

“When did you begin to be interested in invention?” I questioned.

“Well,” he said, “I began to dabble in chemistry at that time. I fitted up a small laboratory on the train.”

In reference to this, Mr. Edison subsequently admitted that, during the progress of some occult experiments in this workshop, certain complications ensued in which a jolted and broken bottle of sulphuric acid attracted the attention of the conductor. He, who had been long suffering in the matter of unearthly odors, promptly ejected the young devotee and all his works. This incident would have been only amusing but for its relation to, and explanation of, his deafness. A box on the ear, administered by the irate conductor, caused the lasting deafness.

TELEGRAPHY

“What was your first work in a practical line?” I went on.

“A telegraph line between my home and another boy’s, I made with the help of an old river cable, some stove-pipe wire, and glass-bottle insulators. I had my laboratory in the cellar and studied telegraphy outside.”

“What was the first really important thing you did?”

“I saved a boy’s life.”

“How?”

“The boy was playing on the track near the depot. I saw he was in danger and caught him, getting out of the way just in time. His father was station-master, and taught me telegraphy in return.”

Dramatic situations appear at every turn of this man’s life. He seems to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical moments, and always with the good sense to take things in his own hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave him a chance to show how apt a pupil he was, and the railroad company soon gave him regular employment. At seventeen, he had become one of the most expert operators on the road.

“Did you make much use of your inventive talent at this time?” I questioned.

“Yes,” he answered. “I invented an automatic attachment for my telegraph instrument which would send in the signal to show I was awake at my post, when I was comfortably snoring in a corner. I didn’t do much of that, though,” he went on; “for some such boyish trick sent me in disgrace over the line into Canada.”

“Were you there long?”

“Only a winter. If it’s incident you want, I can tell you one of that time. The place where I was and Sarnier, the American town, were cut off from telegraphic and other means of communication by the storms, until I got at a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had to do it again and again, but eventually they understood over the water and answered in the same way.”

According to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was successively in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Louisville. He lived in the free-and-easy atmosphere of the tramp operators—a boon companion with them, yet absolutely refusing to join in the dissipations to which they were addicted. So highly esteemed was he for his honesty, that it was the custom of his colleagues, when a spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a more than usually hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather the worse for wear, and knocked the treasurer down on his refusal to deliver the trust money; the other depositors, we may be glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly tippler a sound thrashing.

HIS USE OF MONEY

“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.

“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and materials for experiments.”

“You believe that an excellent way to succeed?”

“Well, it helped me greatly to future success.”

INVENTIONS

“What was your next invention?” I inquired.

“An automatic telegraph recorder—a machine which enabled me to record dispatches at leisure, and send them off as fast as needed.”

“How did you come to hit upon that?”

“Well, at the time, I was in such straits that I had to walk from Memphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station they offered me a place. I had perfected a style of handwriting which would allow me to take legibly from the wire, long hand, forty-seven and even fifty-four words a minute, but I was only a moderately rapid sender. I had to do something to help me on that side, and so I thought out that little device.”

Later I discovered an article by one of his biographers, in which a paragraph referring to this Louisville period, says:—

“True to his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around him a laboratory, printing-office, and machine shop. He took press reports during his whole stay, including on one occasion, the Presidential message, by Andrew Johnson, and this at one sitting, from 3.30 P.M. to 4.30 A.M.

“He then paragraphed the matter he had received over the wires, so that printers had exactly three lines each, thus enabling them to set up a column in two or three minutes’ time. For this, he was allowed all the exchanges he desired, and the Louisville press gave him a dinner.”

“How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability?” I questioned.

“I didn’t manage,” said the Wizard. “Some things I did created comment. A device that I invented in 1868, which utilized one sub-marine cable for two circuits, caused considerable talk, and the Franklin telegraph office of Boston gave me a position.”

It is related of this, Mr. Edison’s first trip East, that he came with no ready money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues were tempted by his “hayseed” appearance to “salt” him, as professional slang terms the process of giving a receiver matter faster than he can record it. For this purpose, the new man was assigned to a wire manipulated by a New York operator famous for his speed. But there was no fun at all. Notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker was in the game and was doing his most speedy clip, Edison wrote out the long message accurately, and, when he realized the situation, was soon firing taunts over the wire at the sender’s slowness.

“Had you patented many things up to the time of your coming East?” I queried.

“Nothing,” said the inventor, ruminatively. “I received my first patent in 1869.”

“For what?”

“A machine for recording votes, and designed to be used in the State Legislature.”

“I didn’t know such machines were in use,” I ventured.

“They ar’n’t,” he answered, with a merry twinkle. “The better it worked, the more impossible it was; the sacred right of the minority, you know,—couldn’t filibuster if they used it,—didn’t use it.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, it was an ingenious thing. Votes were clearly pointed and shown on a roll of paper, by a small machine attached to the desk of each member. I was made to learn that such an innovation was out of the question, but it taught me something.”

“And that was?”

“To be sure of the practical need of, and demand for, a machine, before expending time and energy on it.”

“Is that one of your maxims of success?”

“It is. It is a good rule to give people something they want, and they will pay money to get it.”

HIS ARRIVAL AT THE METROPOLIS

In this same year, Edison removed from Boston to New York, friendless and in debt on account of the expenses of his experiment. For several weeks he wandered about the town with actual hunger staring him in the face. It was a time of great financial excitement, and with that strange quality of Fortunism, which seems to be his chief characteristic, he entered the establishment of the Law Gold Reporting Company just as their entire plant had shut down on account of an accident in the machinery that could not be located. The heads of the firm were anxious and excited to the last degree, and a crowd of the Wall street fraternity waited about for the news which came not. The shabby stranger put his finger on the difficulty at once, and was given lucrative employment. In the rush of the metropolis, a man finds his true level without delay especially when his talents are of so practical and brilliant a nature as were this young telegrapher’s. It would be an absurdity to imagine an Edison hidden in New York. Within a short time, he was presented with a check for $40,000, as his share of a single invention—an improved stock printer. From this time, a national reputation was assured him. He was, too, now engaged upon the duplex and quadruplex systems—systems for sending two and four messages at the same time over a single wire,—which were to inaugurate almost a new era in telegraphy.

MENTAL CONCENTRATION

Recalling the incident of the Law Gold Reporting Company, I inquired: “Do you believe want urges a man to greater efforts, and so to greater success?”

“It certainly makes him keep a sharp look-out. I think it does push a man along.”

“Do you believe that invention is a gift, or an acquired ability?”

“I think it’s born in a man.”

“And don’t you believe that familiarity with certain mechanical conditions and defects naturally suggests improvements to any one?”

“No. Some people may be perfectly familiar with a machine all their days, knowing it inefficient, and never see a way to improve it.”

“What do you think is the first requisite for success in your field, or any other?”

“_The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary._”

TWENTY HOURS A DAY

“Do you have regular hours, Mr. Edison?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, “I do not work hard now. I come to the laboratory about eight o’clock every day and go home to tea at six, and then I study or work on some problem until eleven, which is my hour for bed.”

“Fourteen of fifteen hours a day can scarcely be called loafing,” I suggested.

“Well,” he replied, “for fifteen years I have worked on an average of twenty hours a day.”

When he was forty-seven years old, he estimated his true age at eighty-two, since working only eight hours a day would have taken till that time.

Mr. Edison has sometimes worked sixty consecutive hours upon one problem. Then after a long sleep, he was perfectly refreshed and ready for another.

A RUN FOR BREAKFAST

Mr. Dickson, a neighbor and familiar, gives an anecdote told by Edison which well illustrates his untiring energy and phenomenal endurance. In describing his Boston experience, Edison said he bought Faraday’s works on electricity, commenced to read them at three o’clock in the morning and continued until his room-mate arose, when they started on their long walk to get breakfast. That object was entirely subordinated in Edison’s mind to Faraday, and he suddenly remarked to his friend: “‘Adams, I have got so much to do, and life is so short, that I have got to hustle,’ and with that I started off on a dead run for my breakfast.”

“I’ve known Edison since he was a boy of fourteen,” said another friend; “and of my own knowledge I can say he never spent an idle day in his life. Often, when he should have been asleep, I have known him to sit up half the night reading. He did not take to novels or wild Western adventures, but read works on mechanics, chemistry, and electricity; and he mastered them too. But in addition to his reading, which he could only indulge in at odd hours, he carefully cultivated his wonderful powers of observation, till at length, when he was not actually asleep, it may be said he was learning all the time.”

NOT BY ACCIDENT AND NOT FOR FUN

“Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions? Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?” I asked him.

“I never did anything worth doing by accident,” he replied, “nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph.[4] No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.”

Footnote 4:

“I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone,” said Edison, “when
the vibrations of my voice caused a fine steel point to pierce one of
my fingers held just behind it. That set me to thinking. If I could
record the motions of the point and send it over the same surface
afterward, I saw no reason why the thing would not talk. I determined
to make a machine that would work accurately, and gave my assistants
the necessary instructions, telling them what I had discovered. That’s
the whole story. The phonograph is the result of the pricking of a
finger.”

“I have always kept,” continued Mr. Edison, “strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable only as novelties to catch the popular fancy.”

“I LIKE IT—I HATE IT”

“What makes you work?” I asked with real curiosity. “What impels you to this constant, tireless struggle? You have shown that you care comparatively nothing for the money it makes you, and you have no particular enthusiasm for the attending fame. What is it?”

“I like it,” he answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. “I don’t know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it, until it is finished; and then I hate it.”

“Hate it?” I said.

“Yes,” he affirmed, “when it is all done and is a success, I can’t bear the sight of it. I haven’t used a telephone in ten years, and I would go out of my way any day to miss an incandescent light.”[5]

Footnote 5:

“After I have completed an invention,” remarked Edison, upon another
occasion, “I seem to lose interest in it. One might think that the
money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who
loves his work. But, speaking for myself, I can honestly say this is
not so. Life was never more full of joy to me, than when, a poor boy,
I began to think out improvements in telegraphy, and to experiment
with the cheapest and crudest appliances. But now that I have all the
appliances I need, and am my own master, I continue to find my
greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what
the world calls success.”

DOING ONE THING EIGHTEEN HOURS IS THE SECRET

“You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life,” I ventured, “working eighteen hours a day.”

“Not at all,” he said. “You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object—one thing to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”

POSSIBILITIES IN THE ELECTRICAL FIELD

“You believe, of course,” I suggested, “that much remains to be discovered in the realm of electricity?”

“It is the field of fields,” he answered. “We can’t talk of that, but it holds the secrets which will reorganize the life of the world.”

“You have discovered much about it,” I said, smiling.

“Yes,” he said, “and yet very little in comparison with the possibilities that appear.”

ONLY SIX HUNDRED INVENTIONS

“How many inventions have you patented?”

“Only six hundred,” he answered, “but I have made application for some three hundred more.”

“And do you expect to retire soon, after all this?”

“I hope not,” he said, almost pathetically. “I hope I will be able to work right on to the close. I shouldn’t care to loaf.”

HIS COURTSHIP AND HIS HOME

The idea of the great electrician’s marrying was first suggested by an intimate friend, who told him that his large house and numerous servants ought to have a mistress. Although a very shy man, he seemed pleased with the proposition, and timidly inquired whom he should marry. The friend, annoyed at his apparent want of sentiment, somewhat testily replied,—“Anyone.” But Edison was not without sentiment when the time came. One day, as he stood behind the chair of a Miss Stillwell, a telegraph operator in his employ, he was not a little surprised when she suddenly turned round and said:

“Mr. Edison, I can always tell when you are behind me or near me.”

It was now Miss Stillwell’s turn to be surprised, for, with characteristic bluntness and ardor, Edison fronted the young lady, and, looking her full in the face, said:

“I’ve been thinking considerably about you of late, and, if you are willing to marry me, I would like to marry you.”

The young lady said she would consider the matter, and talk it over with her mother. The result was that they were married a month later, and the union proved a very happy one.

It was in fact no more an accident than other experiments in the Edison laboratory—his bride having been long the subject of the Wizzard’s observation—her mental capacity, her temper and temperament, her aptitude for home-making being duly tested and noted.

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_General Lew Wallace in his study._
(_See page 241._)]

XV

A FASCINATING STORY

BY GENERAL LEW WALLACE

IN his study, a curiously-shaped building lighted from the top, and combining in equal portions the Byzantine, Romanesque and Doric styles of architecture, the gray-haired author of “Ben-Hur,” surrounded by his pictures, books, and military trophies, is spending, in serene and comfortable retirement, the evening of his life. As I sat beside him, the other day, and listened to the recital of his earlier struggles and later achievements, I could not help contrasting his dignified bearing, careful expression, and gentle demeanor, with another occasion in his life, when, as a vigorous, black-haired young military officer, in the spring of 1861, he appeared, with flashing eye and uplifted sword, at the head of his regiment, the gallant and historic Eleventh Indiana Volunteers.

General Wallace never repels a visitor, and his greeting is cordial and ingenuous.

“If I could say anything to stimulate or encourage the young men of to-day,” he said, “I would gladly do so, but I fear that the story of my early days would be of very little interest or value to others. So far as school education is concerned, it may be truthfully said that I had but little, if any; and if, in spite of that deficiency, I ever arrived at proficiency, I reached it, I presume, as Topsy attained her stature,—‘just growed into it.’”

A BOYHOOD OF WASTED OPPORTUNITIES

“Were you denied early school advantages?” I asked.

“Not in the least. On the contrary, I had most abundant opportunity in that respect.

“My father was a lawyer, enjoying a lucrative practice in Brookville, Indiana,—a small town which bears the distinction of having given to the world more prominent men than any other place in the Hoosier State. Not long after my birth, he was elected lieutenant-governor, and, finally, governor of the state. He, himself, was an educated man, having been graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, and having served as instructor in mathematics there. He was not only an educated man, but a man of advanced ideas generally, as shown by the fact that _he failed of a re-election to congress in 1840, because, as a member of the committee on commerce, he gave the casting vote in favor of an appropriation to develop Morse’s magnetic telegraph_.

“Of course, he believed in the value, and tried to impress upon me the necessity of a thorough school training. But, in the face of all the solicitude and encouragement which an indulgent father could waste on an unappreciative son, I remained vexatiously indifferent. I presume I was like some man in history,—it was Lincoln, I believe,—who said that his father taught him to work, but he never quite succeeded in teaching him to love it.

“My father sent me to school, and regularly paid tuition,—for in those days there were no free schools; but, much to my discredit, he failed to secure anything like regular attendance at recitations, or even a decent attempt to master my lessons at any time. In fact, much of the time that should have been given to school was spent in fishing, hunting, and roaming through the woods.”

HIS BOYHOOD LOVE FOR HISTORY AND LITERATURE

“But were you thus indifferent to all forms of education?”

“No, my case was not quite so hopeless as that. I did not desert the schools entirely, but my attendance was so provokingly irregular and my indifference so supreme, I wonder now that I was tolerated at all. But I had one mainstay; I loved to read. I was a most inordinate reader. In some lines of literature, especially history and some kinds of fiction, my appetite was insatiate, and many a day, while my companions were clustered together in the old red brick schoolhouse, struggling with their problems in fractions or percentage, I was carefully hidden in the woods near by, lying upon my elbows, munching an apple, and reveling in the beauties of Plutarch, Byron or Goldsmith.”

“Did you not attend college, or the higher grade of schools?”

“Yes, for a brief period. My brother was a student in Wabash College,—here in Crawfordsville,—and hither I also was sent; but within six weeks I had tired of the routine, was satiated with discipline, and made my exit from the institution.

“I shall never forget what my father did when I returned home. He called me into his office, and, reaching into one of the pigeon-holes above his desk, withdrew therefrom a package of papers neatly folded and tied with the conventional red tape. He was a very systematic man, due, perhaps, to his West Point training, and these papers proved to be the receipts for my tuition, which he had carefully preserved. He called off the items, and asked me to add them together. The total, I confess, staggered me.”

A FATHER’S FRUITFUL WARNING

“‘That sum, my son,’ he said, with a tone of regret in his voice, ‘represents what I have expended in these many years past to provide you with a good education. How successful I have been, you know better than anyone else.’

“‘After mature reflection, I have come to the conclusion that I have done for you in that direction all that can reasonably be expected of any parent; and I have, therefore, called you in to tell you that you have now reached an age when you must take up the lines yourself. If you have failed to profit by the advantages with which I have tried so hard to surround you, the responsibility must be yours. I shall not upbraid you for your neglect, but rather pity you for the indifference which you have shown to the golden opportunities you have, through my indulgence, been enabled to enjoy.’”

A MANHOOD OF SPLENDID EFFORT

“What effect did his admonition have on you? Did it awaken or arouse you?”

“It aroused me, most assuredly. It set me to thinking as nothing before had done. The next day, I set out with a determination to accomplish something for myself. My father’s injunction rang in my ears. New responsibilities rested on my shoulders, as I was, for the first time in my life, my own master. I felt that I must get work on my own account.

“After much effort, I finally obtained employment from the man with whom I had passed so many afternoons strolling up and down the little streams in the neighborhood, trying to fish. He was the county clerk, and he hired me to copy what was known as the complete record of one of the courts. I worked for months in a dingy, half-lighted room, receiving for my pay something like ten cents per hundred words. The tediousness and

THE REGULARITY OF THE WORK WAS A SPLENDID DRILL FOR ME,

and taught me the virtue of persistence as one of the avenues of success. It was at this time I began to realize _the deficiency in my education_, especially as I had an ambition to become a lawyer. Being deficient in both mathematics and grammar, _I was forced to study evenings_. Of course, the latter was a very exacting study, after a full day’s hard work; but I was made to realize that _the time I had spent with such lavish prodigality could not be recovered_, and that I must extract every possible good out of the golden moments then flying by all too fast.”

SELF-EDUCATION BY READING AND LITERARY COMPOSITION

“Had you a distinct literary ambition at that time?”

“Well, I had always had a sort of literary bent or inclination. I read all the literature of the day, besides the standard authors, and finally began to devote my odd moments to a book of my own,—a tale based on the days of the crusades. When completed, it covered about three hundred and fifty pages, and bore the rather high-sounding title, ‘The Man-at-Arms.’ I read a good portion of it before a literary society to which I belonged; the members applauded it, and I was frequently urged to have it published.

“The Mexican War soon followed, however, and I took the manuscript with me when I enlisted. But before the close of my service it was lost, and my production, therefore, never reached the public eye.”

“But did not the approval which the book received from the few persons who read it encourage you to continue writing?”

“Fully fifty years have elapsed since then, and it is, therefore, rather difficult, at this late day, to recall just how such things affected me. I suppose I was encouraged thereby, for, in due course of time, another book which turned out to be

“THE FAIR GOD”

my first book to reach the public,—began to shape itself in my mind. The composition of this work was not, as the theatrical people would say, a continuous performance, for there were many and singular interruptions; and it would be safe to say that months, and, in one case, years, intervened between certain chapters. A few years after the war, I finished the composition, strung the chapters into a continuous narrative, leveled up the uneven places, and started East with the manuscript. A letter from Whitelaw Reid, then editor of the New York _Tribune_, introduced me to the head of one of the leading publishing houses in Boston. There I was kindly received, and delivered my manuscript, which was referred to a professional reader, to determine its literary, and also, I presume, its commercial value.

“It would be neither a new nor an interesting story to acquaint the public with the degree of anxious suspense that pervaded my mind when I withdrew to await the reader’s judgment. Every other writer has, I assume, at one time or another, undergone much the same experience. It was not long until I learned from the publisher that the reader reported in favor of my production. Publication soon followed, and for the first time, in a literary sense, I found myself before the public, and my book before the critics.”

THE ORIGIN OF “BEN-HUR”

“How long after this did ‘Ben-Hur’ appear, and what led you to write it?”

“I began ‘Ben-Hur’ about 1876, and it was published in 1880. The purpose, at first, was a short serial for one of the magazines, descriptive of the visit of the wise men to Jerusalem as mentioned in the first two verses of the second chapter of Matthew. It will be recognized in ‘Book First’ of the work as now published. For certain reasons, however, the serial idea was abandoned, and the narrative, instead of ending with the birth of the Saviour, expanded into a more pretentious novel and only ended with the death scene on Calvary. The last ten chapters were written in the old adobe palace at Santa Fé, New Mexico, where I was serving as governor.

“It is difficult to answer the question, ‘what led me to write the book;’ or why I chose a piece of fiction which used Christ as its leading character. In explanation, it is proper to state that I had reached an age in life when men usually begin to study themselves with reference to their fellowmen, and reflect on the good they may have done in the world. _Up to that time, never having read the Bible_, I knew nothing about sacred history; and, in matters of a religious nature, although I was not in every respect an infidel, I was persistently and notoriously indifferent. _I did not know, and therefore, did not care._ I resolved to begin the study of the good book in earnest.

INFLUENCE OF THE STORY OF THE CHRIST UPON THE AUTHOR

“I was in quest of knowledge, but I had no faith to sustain, no creed to bolster up. The result was that the whole field of religious and biblical history opened up before me; and, my vision not being clouded by previously formed opinions, I was enabled to survey it without the aid of lenses. I believe I was thorough and persistent. I know I was conscientious in my search for the truth. I weighed, I analyzed, I counted and compared. The evolution from conjecture into knowledge, through opinion and belief, was gradual but irresistible; and at length I stood firmly and defiantly on the solid rock.

“Upward of seven hundred thousand copies of ‘Ben-Hur’ have been published, and it has been translated into all languages from French to Arabic. But, whether it has ever influenced the mind of a single reader or not, I am sure its conception and preparation—if it has done nothing more—have convinced its author of the divinity of the lowly Nazarene who walked and talked with God.”

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XVI

Carnegie as a Metal Worker

“THERE is no doubt,” said Mr. Carnegie, in reply to a question from me, “that it is becoming harder and harder, as business gravitates more and more to immense concerns, for a young man without capital to get a start for himself, and in the large cities it is especially so, where large capital is essential. Still it can be honestly said that there is no other country in the world, where able and energetic young men and women can so readily rise as in this. A president of a business college informed me, recently, that he has never been able to supply the demand for capable, first-class [Mark the adjective.] bookkeepers, and his college has over nine hundred students. In America, young men of ability rise with most astonishing rapidity.”

“As quickly as when you were a boy?”

“Much more so. When I was a boy, there were but very few important positions that a boy could aspire to. Every position had to be made. Now a boy doesn’t need to make the place,—all he has to do is to fit himself to take it.”

EARLY WORK AND WAGES

“Where did you begin life?”

“In Dunfermline, Scotland, during my earliest years. The service of my life has all been in this country.”

“In Pittsburg?”

“Largely so. My father settled in Allegheny City, when I was only ten years old, and I began to earn my way in Pittsburg.”

“Do you mind telling me what your first service was?”

“Not at all. I was a bobbin boy in a cotton factory, then an engine-man or boy in the same place, and later still I was a messenger boy for a telegraph company.”

“At small wages, I suppose?”

“One dollar and twenty cents a week was what I received as a bobbin boy, and I considered it pretty good, at that. When I was thirteen, I had learned to run a steam engine, and for that I received a dollar and eighty cents a week.”

“You had no early schooling, then?”

“None except such as I gave myself.”

COLONEL ANDERSON’S BOOKS

“There were no fine libraries then, but in Allegheny City, where I lived, there was a certain Colonel Anderson, who was well to do and of a philanthropic turn. He announced, about the time I first began to work, that he would be in his library at home, every Saturday, ready to lend books to working boys and men. He had only about four hundred volumes, but I doubt if ever so few books were put to better use. Only he who has longed, as I did for Saturday to come, that the spring of knowledge might be opened anew to him, can understand what Colonel Anderson did for me and others of the boys of Allegheny. Quite a number of them have risen to eminence, and I think their rise can be easily traced to this splendid opportunity.”[6]

Footnote 6:

It was Colonel Anderson’s kindness that led Carnegie to bestow his
wealth so generously for founding libraries, as he is now doing every
year.

HIS FIRST GLIMPSE OF PARADISE

“How long did you remain an engine-boy?”

“Not very long,” Mr. Carnegie replied; “perhaps a year.”

“And then?”

“I entered a telegraph office as a messenger boy.”

Although Mr. Carnegie did not dwell much on this period, he once described it at a dinner given in honor of the American Consul at Dunfermline, Scotland, when he said:—

“I awake from a dream that has carried me away back to the days of my boyhood, the day when the little white-haired Scottish laddie, dressed in a blue jacket, walked with his father into the telegraph office in Pittsburg to undergo examination as an applicant for a position as messenger boy.

“Well I remember when my uncle spoke to my parents about it, and my father objected, because I was then getting one dollar and eighty cents per week for running the small engine in a cellar in Allegheny City, but my uncle said a messenger’s wages would be two dollars and fifty cents.... If you want an idea as to heaven on earth, imagine what it is to be taken from a dark cellar, where I fired the boiler from morning until night, and dropped into an office, where light shone from all sides, with books, papers, and pencils in profusion around me, and oh, the tick of those mysterious brass instruments on the desk, annihilating space and conveying intelligence to the world. This was my first glimpse of paradise, and I walked on air.”

“How did you manage to rise from this position?”

“I learned how to operate a telegraph instrument, and then waited an opportunity to show that I was fit to be an operator. Eventually my chance came.”

The truth is that James D. Reid, the superintendent of the office, and himself a Scotchman, favored the ambitious lad. In his “History of the Telegraph,” he says of him:—

“I liked the boy’s looks, and it was easy to see that, though he was little, he was full of spirit. He had not been with me a month when he asked me to teach him to telegraph. He spent all his spare time in practice, sending and receiving by sound and not by tape, as was the custom in those days. Pretty soon he could do as well as I could at the key.”

INTRODUCED TO A BROOM

“As you look back upon it,” I said to Mr. Carnegie, “do you consider that so lowly a beginning is better than one a little less trying?”