books and experimental apparatus,
and even inditing a treatise on electricity. But his very thirst for
knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing. The instruments in the
handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and operators
were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except
on regular work. This prohibition meant little to Edison, who had access
to no other instruments except those of the company. "I went one night,"
he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for
experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through
to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The
next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company
wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay
and get out."

The fact that Edison is a very studious man, an insatiate lover and
reader of books, is well known to his associates; but surprise is often
expressed at his fund of miscellaneous information. This, it will be
seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a "press" reporter.
He says of this: "The second time I was in Louisville, they had moved
into a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press
job. In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking
of press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over
after going to press at 3 A.M. and get all the exchanges I wanted. These
I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than
four or five hours' so that I would awake at nine or ten and read
these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept posted, and knew from their
activity every member of Congress, and what committees they were on; and
all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs
in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than
most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or
sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly
insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to
supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter--pure guessing--but
I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in
Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There
was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the
convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next
day would go a certain way. A