years. He said that
the stories about Edison making use of the inventions of others is all
nonsense; it is Edison who has the ideas and who starts his assistants
to experimenting, some at one thing, some at another, so as to find out
whether the ideas are good.

"He said that the yarns they tell about Edison's working straight ahead
for hours and hours without food and sleep, then throwing himself on a
couch for a short nap and getting up to go at it again are all exactly
true, over and over again. He said that one of the boys in the shop
tried to play a trick on the old man, as they call him, while he was
napping on the couch. They rigged up a talking-machine on a stand and
dressed it in some of Edison's old clothes, put a lullaby record on it,
lugged it in, set it up in front of the couch and set it going, to
express the idea that he was singing himself to sleep. But while they
were at this Mr. Edison, getting on to the joke, for he generally naps
with one eye open, got up and put a lot of stuffing under the couch
spread, stuck his old hat on it so as to make it look as though his face
was covered; then peered through the crack of a door. When the music
commenced he opened the door and said:

"'Boys, it won't work; music can't affect dead matter.' Then they pulled
off the couch cover and all had a good laugh.

"Now. you can see," Bill went on, with ever increasing enthusiasm, "just
how that shows where Mr. Edison stands. Nobody can get ahead of him, and
there isn't anyone with brains who knows him who doesn't admit he has
more brains and is wider awake than anybody else. There's nothing that
he does that doesn't show it. You have all seen his questionnaires for
the men who are employed in his laboratories and you can bet they're no
joke. And his inventions--they're not just the trifling things like
egg-beaters, rat-traps, coat-hangers, bread-mixers, fly-swatters and
lipsticks."

"But some of these things are mighty cute and they coin the dough," said
Ted.

"Oh, they're ingenious and money-makers some of them, I'll admit, but we
could get along very well without them and most of us do. But think of
the real things Edison has done. The first phonograph; improving the
telegraph so that six messages can be sent over the same wire at the
same time; improving the telephone so that everybody can use it;
collecting fine iron ore from sand and dirt by magnets; increasing the
power and the lightness of the storage batter