the bills he owed
he jabbed on one hook, and stuck mems of what was due him on the other.
If he had no tickers ready to deliver when an account came due, he gave
his note for the amount required.

"Then as one bill after another fell due, a bank messenger came with a
notice of protest pinned to the note, demanding a dollar and a quarter
extra for protest fees besides principal and interest. Whereupon he
would go to New York and borrow more funds, or pay the note on the spot
if he happened to have money enough on hand. He kept up this expensive
way of doing business for two years, but his credit was perfectly good.
Every dealer he patronized was glad to furnish him with what he wanted,
and some expressed admiration for his new method of paying bills.

"But, to save his own time, Edison had to hire a bookkeeper whose
inefficiency made him regret for a while the change in his way of doing
business. He tells of one of his experiences with this accountant:

"'After the first three months I told him to go through his books and
see how much we had made.

"Three thousand dollars!" he told me after studying a while. So, to
celebrate this, I gave a dinner to several of the staff.

"'Two days after that he came to tell me he had made a big mistake, for
we had _lost_ five hundred dollars. Several days later he came round
again and tried to prove to me that we had made seven thousand dollars
in the three months!'

"This was so disconcerting that the inventor decided to change
bookkeepers, but he never 'counted his chickens before they were
hatched.' In other words, he did not believe that he had made anything
till he had paid all his bills and had his money safe in the bank.

"Mr. Edison once made the remark that when Jay Gould got possession of
the Western Union Telegraph Company, no further progress in telegraphy
was possible, because Gould took no pride in building up. All he cared
for was money, only money.

"The opposite was true of Edison. While he had decided to invent only
that which was of commercial value, it was not on account of the money
but because that which millions of people will buy is of the greatest
value to the world.

"After he stopped telegraphing, Edison turned his mind to many
inventions. It is not generally known that the first successful, widely
sold typewriter was perfected by him.

"This typewriter proved a difficult thing to make commercial. The
alignment of the letters was very bad. One let