Thomas Alva Edison, the “Wizard of Electricity,” was born in Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847. His birthplace was located on the canal. As there were no railways, it was a very busy little place. Edison used to spend all his playtime at the shops where the canal-boats were built, learning all about the tools being used. Thus before he was seven he began to show his love of machinery. When he was seven years old his parents removed to Michigan. Edison was already well advanced in education for a boy of his age, for his mother had been his careful teacher and companion. They had read and discussed many books together, especially history, of which he was very fond. Two or three books on electricity had come into his hands and these he read with great interest. As his father was poor, it became necessary, when Thomas was eleven years of age, for him to earn his own living. He applied for a position as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad, and he was soon making from four to five dollars a day. When the Civil War broke out his earnings so greatly increased that he hired another boy, and had a place fixed up in an express car, in which he placed a small printing-press and began to publish a paper of his own. He gathered his news on the train and from agents on the route, often securing the latest news being telegraphed to the great papers. His papers had a good sale. Stevenson, the great English engineer, was so pleased with a copy he bought on the train, and with its editor, that he took one thousand copies, and thus the Weekly and its editor became known and quoted in England. He was reading, studying, and experimenting every moment he could get from his work. But he experimented once too often when a bottle of phosphorus was jerked out of his hand by the jolting of the train and instantly the car was in flames. The conductor helped put out the fire and then deposited the youthful inventor, with his printing-press, on the platform of the next station. This ended his laboratory on the train, but he still continued his work, and coaxed his father to let him fit up a workshop at home, where he experimented with telegraph instruments, stringing wires on trees, insulating them with old bottles, and teaching his boy friends the mystery of their use. He was anxious to learn telegraphy, which he succeeded in doing, being taught by a telegraph-operator whose little child Thomas had saved from being killed by a freight-train at the risk of his own life. He soon secured a night operator’s position, but instead of sleeping in the daytime, young Edison spent his days experimenting, and so was too sleepy at night to do his work well. He lost several night positions, but soon got day-work and continued his experiments. He went from city to city, but he cared more for the wonders of electricity than the routine of office work, though his work was always accurate. In Boston he chanced to buy Faraday’s book on electricity, and at once decided that life was short, and he had so much to do that he must hustle—and he has been hustling ever since.

His first invention was an automatic repeater by which messages could be transmitted without the presence of the operator. Since then his inventions have been many and important, among them the quadruplex telegraph, the printing telegraph, the megaphone, the aerophone, the phonograph, the moving-picture machine, the storage battery, the incandescent lamp and light system, and the kinetoscope. He has received patents for more than seven hundred inventions by which daily life has been made more attractive. Thomas Alva Edison is the foremost genius of his day, and the modern magician who has made “the fairy tales of science” as fascinating as “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp,” or “Boots and His Brothers.”

11. BURBANK, FAIRY GODFATHER OF THE ORCHARDS

This is the story of a boy with a magic wand who has made everything he touched more beautiful and more useful. Even when a little baby, he would hold flowers in his hands for hours, never harming them. He loved flowers best of all—better than pets or animals or playthings; better than anything else in the world except his dear mother with her loving, smiling eyes. He and his mother were chums. His father loved books, but his mother loved flowers. While Luther Burbank loved beautiful thoughts from books, like his father, the flowers, trees, and plants that his mother loved, attracted him to the fields and orchards. All the time he longed to help nature. He wondered if he could make weeds useful and make more and better potatoes grow in each hill. He planted the potato-seed ball, watched it, picked it up when the dog knocked it down and, after a great deal of work he had the delicious Burbank potato.

Then, taking the little field-daisy that he found growing by the roadside, he sent to Japan for daisies from that land, and planted the two together. The bees carried the pollen from one flower to another, and after a long time there was the beautiful Shasta Daisy, which is named for Mount Shasta that is within sight of Mr. Burbank’s home.

He is the fairy godfather of the orchards, for he waves his magic wand, and year after year his trees bear finer fruit—sweeter oranges, better plums, larger apricots; and the world is richer for his work.

He teaches the men who help him his magic. They grow tender-eyed, and their fingers are quick and gentle as they plant the tiny seeds, set the tender grafts, and nurse the little frail flower-stalks. He is now a rich man, but he was not always so. When he first left his home in Massachusetts to go to California, he could get no work, and he was often hungry. At last he got a place in a hothouse doing the work he loved—tending flowers and plants. But the poor boy had no money for a room, and had to sleep in the plant-house. But this place was so damp he grew ill, and a poor woman, seeing that he was ill because he did not have the right kind of food, made him drink a pint of milk from her one cow every day. Luther was afraid he might never be able to pay her back, but when he got better and was able to work he paid the good woman for the milk.

When people saw what a wonderful boy Luther Burbank really was, he had more than he could do. He saved his money, bought a little farm, and began to invent wonderful ways of doing things. Later he bought a great nursery, where he loved to experiment with plants and berries and vegetables. He took the prickly, ugly cactus growing in the desert, scratching the hands and tearing the clothes, and caused it to shed its thorns and to put forth flowers and fruit that is good for man and beast. No wonder he is called the “Fairy Godfather of the Orchards,” this man with the smiling blue eyes, loving boys and girls next after the flowers, and loving his mother best of all. What is the magic wand of the “Flower Magician”? It is “Patient Toil”!

12. MARY LYON, EDUCATOR

Girls who appreciate the possibility of the higher education of women in America will hold the name of Mary Lyon in high esteem. She was born on a stony Massachusetts farm, February 28, 1797. She was not pretty, but her face was bright and intelligent, and her spirit was proud, energetic, and helpful. She loved to devise ways by which she could do the largest amount of work in the shortest time. One day she said, “Mother, I have found a way to make time.” At school she showed a wonderfully retentive memory. When Mary was still young, her father died, leaving the family quite poor. But Mary’s mother with energy, prudence, and cheerfulness, managed the little farm so as to keep her children together. Her flowers were the sweetest anywhere. She always found time to do many kind deeds for her neighbors. Struggling against poverty, Mary taught school for almost nothing; spun and wove her own clothes; and studied hard. Her friends thought her foolish to try and learn so much, saying she could never use it. But deep down in her heart she felt she was to lift the world toward the higher education of woman. So she toiled on for years amid hardship, disappointment, and opposition, for neither the men nor the women of that day approved of women being educated or speaking in public. When she solicited funds for her college her friends thought she was unwomanly and a disgrace to her sex. But her earnest, unselfish, persistent spirit won friends for her cause, and on October 3, 1836, Mount Holyoke Seminary, the first school in America for the higher education of women, was founded. She was at the head of it until her death. Her influence over the young ladies was wonderful. She was firm but kind, always expecting them to do right without rules. She was greatly beloved. When she died she was buried in the seminary grounds and a beautiful marble tablet stands over her honored grave, on one side of which are the words: