It was about this time that his mind began to bend towards that which has ever held for him a keen interest through life—the Telegraph. A waking ambition in him desired strongly to perfect himself in it. He was poor and friendless, and yet firmly, doggedly resolved to get on somehow. So out of his scant earnings—still as newsboy—he bought a book on Telegraphy, and this he pored over night and day.
And now at this early age I think the great inventor must have touched that mine that was afterwards to yield him so wondrously of its wealth.
The boyish mind was putting out feelers, gropingly at first, in the direction of creation, that divine faculty that is granted to so few of us. We can recognise the seed in its first tiny sproutings. He and a boy friend resolved to make a telegraph. They made a line of wire between their houses, insulated with bottles, and crossed under a busy thoroughfare by means of an old cable found in the bed of the Detroit River. The first magnets were wound with wire and swathed in ancient rags, and a piece of spring brass formed the key. Edison pressed two large and formidable-looking cats into his service, tied a wire to their legs, and applied friction to their backs. But the experiment ended in failure. The cats, frightened and furious, resented the liberty, and parted company with, the wire, dashing off in different directions.
But failure never discouraged Edison, nor stayed the working of his brain. He was a true philosopher, and he was, like an elastic ball, possessed of enormous rebound.
Handed down to us there is a story of the boy which, while it may not throw much light on his brain, throws some on his heart and on his ready courage. He was still a newspaper boy on the trains, and while at most stations a few minutes was the limit of waiting, at a certain station where shunting took place the minutes ran to half an hour. The boy was wont to spend this half-hour with the stationmaster’s child, of whom he was fond, or to loiter about his garden. On this particular day the engine-driver had unlinked the cars in a siding, and one was being sent with a good deal of impetus to join another portion. It came on steadily, no one on it to control it, and right in its path was the unconscious baby smiling in the morning sunshine. Not a moment was to be lost. Edison threw down his papers and his hat on the platform and dashed to the rescue. And not a second too soon. As he threw himself and the child free of the line the car passed and struck his heel. The two fell with such violence on the gravel beyond that the stone particles were driven into their flesh, but they were safe!
The grateful father was at a loss how he could show his gratitude to the rescuer of his child. He had little money and no reward to give. At last a plan occurred to him.
“I will teach you telegraphing,” he said to the boy, “and prepare you for the position of night operator at not less than twenty-five dollars a month.”
Edison was delighted. The bargain was struck. The wage seemed, no doubt, a small fortune to the boy—rather more than five of our English pounds.
And now he had got his “toe on the tape,” his foot on the ladder, if it were only on the lowest round. In three months he could teach his master, and the promised situation was got for him. From that he passed to other situations, and gradually he began to make his mark.
He had a mind wonderfully quick to see a difficult situation and to deal with it.