"I wonder if the Professor thinks we're millionaires." Bill was plainly disappointed.
"Oh, well, he didn't finish what he was saying to us. Let's listen to the weather report," demanded Gus, ever optimistic and joyful.
The words came clearer than ever out of that wonderful horn. There was to be rain that afternoon—local thunderstorms, followed by clearing and cooler. On the morrow it would be cloudy and unsettled.
Bill felt as though that prediction suited his mental state! Gus was never the kind to worry; he sat smiling at the horn and he received with added pleasure the music of a band which followed. And then came the second talk on the boyhood of the master of invention.
"It has been said," spouted the horn, "that high mental characteristics are accompanied by heroic traits. Whether true or not generally, it was demonstrated in young Edison and it governed his learning telegraphy and the manner thereof. The story is told by the telegraph operator at Mt. Clemens, where the red-headed conductor threw the train boy and his laboratory off the train.
"'Young Edison,' says the station agent, 'had endeared himself to the station agents, operators and their families all along the line. As the mixed train did the way-freight work and the switching at Mt. Clemens, it usually consumed not less than thirty minutes, during which time Al would play with my little two-and-a-half-year old son, Jimmy.
"'It was at 9:30 on a lovely summer morning. The train had arrived, leaving its passenger coach and baggage car standing on the main track at the north end of the station platform, the pin between the baggage and the first box car having been pulled out. There were about a dozen freight cars, which had pulled ahead and backed in upon the freight-house siding. The train men had taken out a box car and pushed it with force enough to reach the baggage car without a brakeman controlling it.
"'At this moment Al turned and saw little Jimmy on the main track, throwing pebbles over his head in the sunshine, all unconscious of danger. Dashing his papers and cap on the platform he plunged to the rescue.
"'The train baggage man was the only eyewitness. He told me that when he saw Al jump toward Jimmy he thought sure both boys would be crushed. Seizing Jimmy in his arms just as the box car was about to strike them, young Edison threw himself off the track. There wasn't a tenth of a second to lose. By this instinctive act he saved his own life, for if he had thrown the little chap first and then himself, he would have been crushed under the wheels.
"'As it was, the front wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot and he and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast so hard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure the wheel had gone over them. To his surprise their injuries proved to be only skin deep.