and get the station master
to chalk up on the blackboard out on the station platform that there has
been a big battle, with thousands killed and wounded, I'll give you
_Harper's Weekly_ free for six months!'

"The operator agreed and that Edison boy tore back to the _Free Press_
office.

"'I want a thousand papers!' he gasped. 'Pay you to-morrow!' This was
more than three times as many as he had taken out before, so the clerk
refused to trust him.

"'Where's Mr. Storey?' demanded the lad. The clerk snickered as he
jerked his head toward where the managing editor was talking with a
'big' man from out of town. Young Edison was forced to break in, but the
editor noticed how anxious and business-like he was. When the boy had
told him what he wanted, the great newspaper man scribbled a few words
on a scrap of paper and handed it down to him, saying:

"'Here, take this. Wish you good luck!'

"Al handed the clerk the order and got his thousand papers at once. He
hired another 'newsie' to help him down to the station with them. Long
after this, he told the rest of the story:

"'At Utica, the first station, twelve miles out of Detroit, I usually
sold two papers at five cents each. As we came up I put my head out and
thought I saw an excursion party. The people caught sight of me and
commenced to shout. Then it began to occur to me that they wanted
papers. I rushed back into the car, grabbed an armful, and sold forty
there.

"'Mt. Clemens was the next stop. When that station came in sight, I
thought there was a riot. The platform was crowded with a howling mob,
and I realized that they were after news of Shiloh, so I raised the
price to ten cents, and sold a hundred and fifty where I never had got
rid of more than a dozen.

"'At other stations these scenes were repeated, but the climax came when
we got to Port Huron. I had to jump off the train about a quarter of a
mile from the station which was situated out of town. I had paid a big
Dutch boy to haul several loads of sand to that point, and the engineers
knew I was going to jump so they slowed down a bit. Still, I was quite
an expert on the jump. I heaved off my bundle of papers and landed all
right. As usual, the Dutch boy met me and we carried the rest of the
papers toward the town.

"'We had hardly got half way when we met a crowd hurrying toward the
station. I thought I knew what they were after, so I stopped in front of
a church where a prayer-meeting was just