etc. When I came into the box, the orchestra played the
'Star-Spangled Banner,' and all the people in the house arose; whereupon
I was very much embarrassed. After I had been an hour at the play, the
manager came around and asked me to go underneath the stage, as they
were putting on a ballet of 300 girls, the finest ballet in Europe. It
seems there is a little hole on the stage with a hood over it, in which
the prompter sits when opera is given. In this instance it was not
occupied, and I was given the position in the prompter's seat, and saw
the whole ballet at close range.

"The city of Paris gave me a dinner at the new Hotel de Ville, which was
also lighted with the Edison system. They had a very fine installation
of machinery. As I could not understand or speak a word of French,
I went to see our minister, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and got him to send a
deputy to answer for me, which he did, with my grateful thanks. Then the
telephone company gave me a dinner, and the engineers of France; and
I attended the dinner celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the
discovery of photography. Then they sent to Reid my decoration, and they
tried to put a sash on me, but I could not stand for that. My wife had
me wear the little red button, but when I saw Americans coming I would
slip it out of my lapel, as I thought they would jolly me for wearing
it."

Nor was this all. Edison naturally met many of the celebrities of
France: "I visited the Eiffel Tower at the invitation of Eiffel. We went
to the top, where there was an extension and a small place in which was
Eiffel's private office. In this was a piano. When my wife and I arrived
at the top, we found that Gounod, the composer, was there. We stayed a
couple of hours, and Gounod sang and played for us. We spent a day at
Meudon, an old palace given by the government to Jansen, the astronomer.
He occupied three rooms, and there were 300. He had the grand
dining-room for his laboratory. He showed me a gyroscope he had got
up which made the incredible number of 4000 revolutions in a second. A
modification of this was afterward used on the French Atlantic lines for
making an artificial horizon to take observations for position at
sea. In connection with this a gentleman came to me a number of years
afterward, and I got out a part of some plans for him. He wanted to make
a gigantic gyroscope weighing several tons, to be run by an electric
motor and put on a sailing ship. He wanted this g