His kindness of heart was well known, and there were many about only too ready to take advantage of it. There were telegraphists who roamed the country in time of war—“tramp operators” they were called, who took short engagements and generally ended their time with a “spree.” These found out Edison—a man who did not drink himself and a man who might be persuaded to lend them money—and these were his worst enemies.
One day he had bought at an auction fifty volumes of the North American Review. Half a dozen men were sponging off him in his rooms when he brought home the books and ranged them unsuspiciously round his walls. Directly he had gone out his guests helped themselves to his purchase, landed them at the nearest pawnbroker’s, and drank the money they brought.
But his love for experiments sometimes brought him into scrapes and disaster, as when he moved a bottle of sulphuric acid one day, strictly against rules, and the bottle spilt, the contents eating through the floor to the manager’s room below and there eating up his floor and carpet, the unlucky accident bringing Edison his dismissal.
And now, at the age of twenty-one, after many different situations and different experiences, Edison turned his steps to Boston. His openhandedness had left him short of money. As was often the case with him, he was sailing very close to the wind. His dress was poor and shabby, and four days’ and nights’ travelling had not improved his appearance. When he presented himself at the office where he was to be taken on, the other clerks ridiculed him as “a jay from the woolly west.”
They made up their minds to play a practical joke on him. They took the New York telegraph man into their confidence. It was arranged he should send a despatch which Edison was to receive. By this time Edison had so perfected himself in receiving messages that he could write from forty-six to fifty-four words a minute—quicker than any operator in the United States.
Not knowing his man, the sender began slowly—then quickened his pace. So did Edison. Quicker still he worked. Edison was in no way discomfited. Soon the New York man had reached his highest speed, to which Edison responded with ease, cool, collected, and stopping now and then to sharpen a pencil between.
By this time he had discovered that the others were trying to get “a rise” out of him, but he went on steadily with his work. Then he stopped and spoke quietly through to the New York man.
“Say, young man,” he said, in his dry humorous way, “change off and send with your other foot.”
But the New York man had reached the end of his tether and had to get someone else to finish, and so Edison won his laurels, and “the jay from the woolly west” was regarded ever after with enormous respect.
After that his place was in the front rank. Now he had reached the threshold of manhood, and a long, dazzling vista of achievement and success stretched before him had he known it. About this time a great, strong conviction of his responsibilities and of the opportunities life held out to him swept over him.