Edison, His Life and Inventions [25]
his own.
Such a class or group of men can always be presented by an individual type, and this is assuredly best embodied in Milton F. Adams, one of Edison's earliest and closest friends, to whom reference will be made in later chapters, and whose life has been so full of adventurous episodes that he might well be regarded as the modern Gil Blas. That career is certainly well worth the telling as "another story," to use the Kipling phrase. Of him Edison says: "Adams was one of a class of operators never satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the `wanderlust.' After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the floor of my hall- bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist, while the boarding-house itself was run on the banting system of flesh reduction, he came to me one day and said: `Good-bye, Edison; I have got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.' And he did go. How, I never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there, and then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. He got a big torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market-report bureau in Buenos Ayres. This didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong (as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran a panorama called `Paradise Lost' in the Kaffir kraals. This didn't pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then went to England to raise money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in New York, having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Colombia, with a power of attorney and $2000 from a native of that republic, who had applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley--a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams, then, a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him." Adams, in speaking of this episode, says that when he asked for transportation expenses to St. Louis, Edison pulled out of his pocket a ferry ticket to Hoboken, and said to his associates: "I'll give him that, and he'll get there all right." This was in the early days of electric lighting; but down to the present moment the peregrinations of this versatile genius of the key have never ceased in one hemisphere or the other, so that as Mr. Adams himself remarked to the authors in April, 1908: "The life has been somewhat variegated, but never dull."
The fact remains also that throughout this period Edison, while himself a very Ishmael, never ceased to study, explore, experiment. Referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that throws light on his ceaseless application. "After I became a telegraph operator," he says, "I practiced for a long time to become a rapid reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning of a whole line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed, reading is laborious."
CHAPTER V
ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
IN 1903, when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the International Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904, to commemorate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, Mr. Edison spoke in his letter of the Central West as a "region where as a young telegraph operator I spent many arduous years before moving East." The term of probation thus referred to did not end until 1868, and while it lasted Edison's wanderings carried him from Detroit to New Orleans, and took him, among other cities, to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis, some
Such a class or group of men can always be presented by an individual type, and this is assuredly best embodied in Milton F. Adams, one of Edison's earliest and closest friends, to whom reference will be made in later chapters, and whose life has been so full of adventurous episodes that he might well be regarded as the modern Gil Blas. That career is certainly well worth the telling as "another story," to use the Kipling phrase. Of him Edison says: "Adams was one of a class of operators never satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the `wanderlust.' After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the floor of my hall- bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist, while the boarding-house itself was run on the banting system of flesh reduction, he came to me one day and said: `Good-bye, Edison; I have got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.' And he did go. How, I never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there, and then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. He got a big torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market-report bureau in Buenos Ayres. This didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong (as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran a panorama called `Paradise Lost' in the Kaffir kraals. This didn't pay, and he became the editor of a newspaper; then went to England to raise money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in New York, having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Colombia, with a power of attorney and $2000 from a native of that republic, who had applied for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a pulley--a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams, then, a position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired of, and I lost sight of him." Adams, in speaking of this episode, says that when he asked for transportation expenses to St. Louis, Edison pulled out of his pocket a ferry ticket to Hoboken, and said to his associates: "I'll give him that, and he'll get there all right." This was in the early days of electric lighting; but down to the present moment the peregrinations of this versatile genius of the key have never ceased in one hemisphere or the other, so that as Mr. Adams himself remarked to the authors in April, 1908: "The life has been somewhat variegated, but never dull."
The fact remains also that throughout this period Edison, while himself a very Ishmael, never ceased to study, explore, experiment. Referring to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that throws light on his ceaseless application. "After I became a telegraph operator," he says, "I practiced for a long time to become a rapid reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning of a whole line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in schools, as it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or three books in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed, reading is laborious."
CHAPTER V
ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
IN 1903, when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the International Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904, to commemorate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, Mr. Edison spoke in his letter of the Central West as a "region where as a young telegraph operator I spent many arduous years before moving East." The term of probation thus referred to did not end until 1868, and while it lasted Edison's wanderings carried him from Detroit to New Orleans, and took him, among other cities, to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis, some