e that in a year or two his
aspirations necessitated an increase of revenue; and a consequent
determination to earn some money for himself led to his first real
commercial enterprise as "candy butcher" on the Grand Trunk Railroad,
already mentioned in a previous chapter. It has also been related how
his precious laboratory was transferred to the train; how he and it were
subsequently expelled; and how it was re-established in his home, where
he continued studies and experiments until the beginning of his career
as a telegraph operator.

The nomadic life of the next few years did not lessen his devotion to
study; but it stood seriously in the way of satisfying the ever-present
craving for a laboratory. The lack of such a place never prevented
experimentation, however, as long as he had a dollar in his pocket
and some available "hole in the wall." With the turning of the tide of
fortune that suddenly carried him, in New York in 1869, from poverty
to the opulence of $300 a month, he drew nearer to a realization of his
cherished ambition in having money, place, and some time (stolen from
sleep) for more serious experimenting. Thus matters continued until,
at about the age of twenty-two, Edison's inventions had brought him a
relatively large sum of money, and he became a very busy manufacturer,
and lessee of a large shop in Newark, New Jersey.

Now, for the first time since leaving that boyish laboratory in the old
home at Port Huron, Edison had a place of his own to work in, to think
in; but no one in any way acquainted with Newark as a swarming centre
of miscellaneous and multitudinous industries would recommend it as a
cloistered retreat for brooding reverie and introspection, favorable to
creative effort. Some people revel in surroundings of hustle and bustle,
and find therein no hindrance to great accomplishment. The electrical
genius of Newark is Edward Weston, who has thriven amid its turmoil
and there has developed his beautiful instruments of precision; just
as Brush worked out his arc-lighting system in Cleveland; or even as
Faraday, surrounded by the din and roar of London, laid the intellectual
foundations of the whole modern science of dynamic electricity. But
Edison, though deaf, could not make too hurried a retreat from Newark to
Menlo Park, where, as if to justify his change of base, vital inventions
soon came thick and fast, year after year. The story of Menlo has been
told in another chapter, but the point