When Thomas A. Edison went out into the world to make his way, he had received only two months’ regular schooling, but his mother had early impressed upon his mind the thought that he must atone for his lack of school training by developing a taste for reading. His biographers tell us that the “Penny Encyclopedia” and Ure’s “History of the Sciences” were in his hands at a time when most boys, having become acquainted with stories of adventure, look for mystery in every bush and resolve to become pirates and Indian fighters. There are many stories of his early acuteness. One relates how when a boy of twelve or fourteen he was employed in selling papers on a railroad train in Michigan, and upon receiving advance news of a battle of the Rebellion fought at that time he secured fifteen hundred papers on credit, telegraphed the headlines to the stations along the route, and sold his wares at a premium. It was after this exploit that he conceived the idea of starting a daily paper of his own. Securing some old type from the “Detroit Free Press,” he set up his establishment in a car and began the publication of the “Grand Trunk Herald,” the first newspaper ever published on a train. He also installed in the car a laboratory for making experiments in chemistry, and both his newspaper and his experiments flourished until one unlucky day when he set fire to the car with phosphorus. This was too much for the conductor who promptly threw the young editor and scientist with all his belongings out on the station platform, and in addition boxed his ears so roughly as to cause him to be ever after partly deaf. But misfortune could not dampen his ardor. His lack of schooling was more than atoned for by his grit, ambition and studious habits. With the possession of these qualities and the disposition to make the most of spare moments, this famous physicist, chemist, mechanician, and inventor has done more for himself, and more for humanity and the advancement of civilization than any of the college-bred workers in industrial sciences during the last half-century.
The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.—George Eliot.
The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.—Disraeli.
He needs no tears who lived a noble life.—Fitz James O’Brien.
“Yesterday’s successes belong to yesterday with all of yesterday’s defeats and sorrows,” says a present day philosopher. “The day is here! The time is now!”
RIGHT HERE AND JUST NOW
I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser to-day than he was yesterday.—Abraham Lincoln.
“If I’d ’a’ been born,” says Sy Slocum to me,
“In some other far-away clime,
Or if I could ’a’ had my existence,” says he,