I have before me as I write the picture of a square, brick house, with outside shutters hooked back, a white paling half encircling it, and a couple of bare, leafless trees before it. The house is plain and poor, and has a strangely unfamiliar look to our English eyes, but it is of the deepest interest to us as the birthplace of Thomas Edison.
EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY.
The boy first saw the light in 1847, and though he came into the world with but a poor provision waiting him, he found himself welcomed with a very wealth of love and tenderness. Mrs. Edison had Scotch blood in her veins, and she was a mother in a thousand. It is a common thing in history to find that a son draws his greatness, many of his best qualities, from his mother, and this son took many of his from Mrs. Edison. She was his constant companion, his loving nurse, his gentle teacher during those early years of life that leave so deep an impress on the “afterwards.”
The child was seven years old when the Edison family moved to a place called Port Huron, and there he began to spend every spare moment in reading. So earnest was he that he set himself to read through the Detroit Free Library, and had devoured a close row of volumes before his attempt was discovered.
Strange and solemn sound some of the titles of the books he read when he was twelve years old—a time when most boys are lightly dipping into newspapers and magazines and books of adventure. Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, Hume’s History of England, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
In 1862, when he was barely fifteen years old, he came out more fully from the shelter of home and mixed with the busy world, making a place in it for himself by his own young wits. He was a newspaper boy, and sold his papers like other boys, not stopping still in one place, but going on the train to different stations along the line, and selling as he went.
About this time there was a great fever and ferment in America. The North were fighting with the South, and people panted for news of each battle as it took place. Papers with reports were devoured as soon as printed.
“Now,” thought Edison, “is my chance,” and there began to work in the brain of the boy a big scheme. As the first step to carrying it out, he betook himself to the station telegraph clerk.
“If,” he said, “you will let me wire the war news on a few stations ahead, and have it written up on the blackboard, I will promise you some papers, and now and then a magazine.”