Once more he threw up his work, and, with a couple of young friends, made his way to New Orleans, where they expected to catch a specially chartered steamer for Brazil.
They arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the great riot, when the city was in the hands of a mob. The government had seized the steamer for carrying troops. The young men therefore visited another shipping office to make inquiries about vessels for Brazil.
Here they got into conversation with an old Spaniard, to whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South America, and was very emphatic in advising them that the worst thing they could do was to leave the United States, whose freedom, calm, and opportunities could not be equaled anywhere on the face of the globe. Edison took the Spaniard's advice, and made his way North again. He heard later that his two companions had gone to Vera Cruz and had died there of yellow fever.
He returned to Louisville and resumed work there. He seems to have been fairly comfortable and happy at this time. He surrounded himself with books and various apparatus, and even indited a treatise on electricity.
It is well known that Edison is very studious and a great reader, but his associates sometimes felt surprised at his fund of general information. His own words throw some light upon this subject: "The second time I was in Louisville the Telegraph Company had moved into a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press job. In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking of press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over, after the paper went to press, at 3 A.M., and get all the exchanges I wanted. These I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than four or five hours, so that I would awake at nine or ten and read these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept posted, and knew from their activity every member of Congress, and what committees they were on, and all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter—pure guessing—but I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about ten o'clock, and my wire worked badly, and there was a cessation of all signals; then I made out the words 'Minor Botts.' The next was a New York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote had gone as I was sure it would go. But next day I learned that, instead of there being a vote, the convention had adjourned without action until the day after."
The insatiable thirst for knowledge beyond known facts again proved Edison's undoing. Operators were strictly forbidden to remove instruments or to use batteries except on extra work. This rule did not mean much to Edison, who had access to no other instruments except those of the company. "I went one night," he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get out."
Thus he was once more thrown upon the world. He went back to Cincinnati, and began his second term there as an operator. He was again put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. He rented a room on the top floor of an office building, bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools.
He became acquainted with Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to take such scrap apparatus as he might desire that was of no use to the company.
Edison and Sommers became very friendly, and were congenial in many ways. Both of them enjoyed jokes of a practical nature, and Edison relates one of them as follows: "Sommers was a very witty man," he says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the roundhouse of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. Above this wash-room was a flat roof. We bored a hole through the roof, and could see the men as they came in. The first man as he entered dipped his hands in the water. The floor, being wet, formed a circuit, and up went his hands. He tried it the second time, with the same result. He then stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which occurred shortly after, with the same result. Then they went out, and the place was soon crowded and there was considerable excitement. Various theories were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We enjoyed the sport immensely."
The reader must remember this occurred forty years ago, when electricity was not popularly understood. Had it occurred to-day the mystery would have soon been explained.