closing. I raised the price to
twenty-five cents and began taking in a young fortune.

"'Almost at the same moment the meeting closed and the people came
rushing out. The way the coin materialized made me think the deacons had
forgotten to pass the plate in that meeting!'

"In those days they commonly called trainboys 'Candy Butchers'; the
terms 'Newsies' and 'Peanuts' may have been used then also but were not
so common. They are not so common on trains nowadays, except in the West
and South, but formerly they were even more of an institution than the
water cooler or the old-fashioned winter stove. The station-shouting
brakemen were no more familiar or comforting to weary passengers than
the 'candy butchers' and their welcome stock."

CHAPTER IV

_Paul Pry_ ON WHEELS

"With all he had to do, young Edison found that he had time on his hands
which he might yet put to good use. One would think being 'candy
butcher' and newsboy from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M., and making from $10.00 to
$12.00 a day might satisfy the boy's cravings. But contentment wasn't
one of Al Edison's numerous virtues.

"He did not know it, but he was following the footsteps of that other
great American inventor, Benjamin Franklin, as a printer, editor,
proprietor and publisher. In one of the stores where he stocked up with
books, magazines and stationery for his train, there was an old printing
press which the dealer, Mr. Roys, had taken for a debt. Mr. Roys once
told the little story of that press:

"'Young Edison, who was a good boy and a favorite of mine, bought goods
of me and had the run of the store. He saw the press, and I suppose he
thought at once that he would publish a paper himself, for he could
catch onto a new idea like lightning. He got me to show him how it
worked, and finally bought it for a small sum.'

"From his printer friends on the _Free Press_ he bought some old type.
Watching the compositors at work, he learned to set type and make up the
forms, so within two weeks after purchasing the press he brought out the
first number of _The Weekly Herald_--the first paper ever written, set
up, proof-read, printed, published and sold (besides all his other work)
on a local train--and this by a boy of fourteen!

"Of course, it had to be a sort of local paper, giving train and station
gossip with sage remarks and 'preachments' from the boy's standpoint. It
sold for three cents a copy, or eight cents a month to regular
customers.