We cannot, any of us, imitate his genius or his power of invention, or his splendid physical strength, but it is within the scope of all of us, however young or insignificant, to copy his conscientious, unwearied hard work.
“Ah, ye lads,” he used to say to young men when he was himself an old one, in his broad, honest Doric, “there’s none o’ ye know what wark is!”
He has left us a splendid example of patience, content, courage, attention to detail. But most precious of all, of a heart that beat as kindly in old age as in youth, that made him dearly loved by his workmen, and that never turned away from hearing and helping those in trouble.
Riches and success and prosperity, crowding upon him in later years, had no power to spoil the simple beauty of his character, for the Wylam collier’s son, besides being the world’s honoured inventor, was also “one of Nature’s gentlemen.”
THOMAS ALVA EDISON.
To see as a boy the greatest inventor of the age, we shall have to cross the Atlantic and take a journey to the United States of America. England has done wonders in the way of discovery and invention, but it is to New England, as we call it, because she is a daughter of the old Mother Country, that we must go for a brightness and a sharpness of wit that sometimes make us think of the flash of polished steel.
We all know the name of Edison. It is not a name of history, for he is living to-day, a man still in his prime, still sending out from that wonderful brain of his things that astonish men, and have won for him the name of the “wonder-worker of the modern world.”