e. "I became quite valuable to
Mr. Walker. After working all day I worked at the office nights as well,
for the reason that 'press report' came over one of the wires until 3
A.M., and I would cut in and copy it as well as I could, to become more
rapidly proficient. The goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be
able to take press. Mr. Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me
at $20 per month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on
the Grand Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place,
nights, at Stratford Junction, Canada." Apparently his friend Mackenzie
helped him in the matter. The position carried a salary of $25 per
month. No serious objections were raised by his family, for the distance
from Port Huron was not great, and Stratford was near Bayfield, the
old home from which the Edisons had come, so that there were doubtless
friends or even relatives in the vicinity. This was in 1863.

Mr. Walker was an observant man, who has since that time installed a
number of waterworks systems and obtained several patents of his own. He
describes the boy of sixteen as engrossed intensely in his experiments
and scientific reading, and somewhat indifferent, for this reason, to
his duties as operator. This office was not particularly busy, taking
from $50 to $75 a month, but even the messages taken in would remain
unsent on the hook while Edison was in the cellar below trying to solve
some chemical problem. The manager would see him studying sometimes
an article in such a paper as the Scientific American, and then
disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from the
drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required
by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, in
this offhand manner, whether what he had read was correct or not. When
he had completed his experiment all interest in it was lost, and the
jars and wires would be left to any fate that might befall them. In like
manner Edison would make free use of the watchmaker's tools that lay
on the little table in the front window, and would take the wire pliers
there without much thought as to their value as distinguished from a
lineman's tools. The one idea was to do quickly what he wanted to do;
and the same swift, almost headlong trial of anything that comes to
hand, while the fervor of a new experiment is felt, has been noted
at all stages of the inventor's career. One is remin