and experience to solve. To advance along smooth
and pleasant paths, to encounter no obstacles, to wrestle with no
difficulties and hardships--such has absolutely no fascination to him.
He meets obstruction with the keen delight of a strong man battling with
the waves and opposing them in sheer enjoyment, and the greater and more
apparently overwhelming the forces that may tend to sweep him back, the
more vigorous his own efforts to forge through them. At the conclusion
of the ore-milling experiments, when practically his entire fortune was
sunk in an enterprise that had to be considered an impossibility, when
at the age of fifty he looked back upon five or six years of intense
activity expended apparently for naught, when everything seemed most
black and the financial clouds were quickly gathering on the horizon,
not the slightest idea of repining entered his mind. The main experiment
had succeeded--he had accomplished what he sought for. Nature at another
point had outstripped him, yet he had broadened his own sum of knowledge
to a prodigious extent. It was only during the past summer (1910) that
one of the writers spent a Sunday with him riding over the beautiful
New Jersey roads in an automobile, Edison in the highest spirits and
pointing out with the keenest enjoyment the many beautiful views of
valley and wood. The wanderings led to the old ore-milling plant at
Edison, now practically a mass of deserted buildings all going to decay.
It was a depressing sight, marking such titanic but futile struggles
with nature. To Edison, however, no trace of sentiment or regret
occurred, and the whole ruins were apparently as much a matter of
unconcern as if he were viewing the remains of Pompeii. Sitting on the
porch of the White House, where he lived during that period, in the
light of the setting sun, his fine face in repose, he looked as placidly
over the scene as a happy farmer over a field of ripening corn. All that
he said was: "I never felt better in my life than during the five years
I worked here. Hard work, nothing to divert my thought, clear air and
simple food made my life very pleasant. We learned a great deal. It will
be of benefit to some one some time." Similarly, in connection with the
storage battery, after having experimented continuously for three years,
it was found to fall below his expectations, and its manufacture had
to be stopped. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on the
experiments, and,