om Columbia University,
New York, followed up his studies while a night operator, and came out
brilliantly at the head of his class. Edison says of these scholars that
they paraded their knowledge rather freely, and that it was his delight
to go to the second-hand book stores on Cornhill and study up questions
which he could spring upon them when he got an occasion. With those
engaged on night duty he got midnight lunch from an old Irishman called
"the Cake Man," who appeared regularly with his wares at 12 midnight.
"The office was on the ground floor, and had been a restaurant previous
to its occupation by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was
literally loaded with cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the
board running around the room at the floor, and which came after the
lunch. These were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips
of tinfoil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive
pole of the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative
pole to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would
pass over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips
there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This
automatic electrocuting device attracted so much attention, and got half
a column in an evening paper, that the manager made me stop it." The
reader will remember that a similar plan of campaign against rats was
carried out by Edison while in the West.

About this time Edison had a narrow escape from injury that might easily
have shortened his career, and he seems to have provoked the trouble
more or less innocently by using a little elementary chemistry. "After
being in Boston several months," he says, "working New York wire No.
1, I was requested to work the press wire, called the 'milk route,' as
there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. New
York office had reported great delays on the wire, due to operators
constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it was called, to have words
repeated which they had failed to get; and New York claimed that Boston
was one of the worst offenders. It was a rather hard position for me,
for if I took the report without breaking, it would prove the previous
Boston operator incompetent. The results made the operator have some
hard feelings against me. He was put back on the wire, and did much
better after that. It seems that the office boy was down on this man.
One night h