“The boy was playing on the track near the depot. I saw he was in danger and caught him, getting out of the way just in time. His father was station-master, and taught me telegraphy in return.”
Dramatic situations appear at every turn of this man’s life. He seems to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical moments, and always with the good sense to take things in his own hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave him a chance to show how apt a pupil he was, and the railroad company soon gave him regular employment. At seventeen, he had become one of the most expert operators on the road.
“Did you make much use of your inventive talent at this time?” I questioned.
“Yes,” he answered. “I invented an automatic attachment for my telegraph instrument which would send in the signal to show I was awake at my post, when I was comfortably snoring in a corner. I didn’t do much of that, though,” he went on; “for some such boyish trick sent me in disgrace over the line into Canada.”
“Were you there long?”
“Only a winter. If it’s incident you want, I can tell you one of that time. The place where I was and Sarnier, the American town, were cut off from telegraphic and other means of communication by the storms, until I got at a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had to do it again and again, but eventually they understood over the water and answered in the same way.”
According to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was successively in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Louisville. He lived in the free-and-easy atmosphere of the tramp operators—a boon companion with them, yet absolutely refusing to join in the dissipations to which they were addicted. So highly esteemed was he for his honesty, that it was the custom of his colleagues, when a spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a more than usually hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather the worse for wear, and knocked the treasurer down on his refusal to deliver the trust money; the other depositors, we may be glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly tippler a sound thrashing.
HIS USE OF MONEY
“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.
“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and materials for experiments.”