h his mother on the piazza. They seemed so happy
that the children who went to school often wished they could study with
Mrs. Edison. She was fond of children and was apt to run down to the
gate with some cookies or apples for them.

Sunny days Thomas liked to go with his father and mother into a tower
Mr. Edison had built near the house. It was eighty feet high, and from
its top one could see the broad river and hills beyond.

At the age of nine, Thomas was more fond of reading than of playing.
When he was twelve, he got the notion in his head that it would be a
fine thing to read every book that was in the Public Library in Detroit.
He kept at it for months! But when he had read every book on the first
fifteen feet of shelves, he saw that some were very dry and stupid and
gave up his plan. After that he chose the books that told of interesting
things.

When Thomas was eleven, he felt he ought to be doing something besides
reading. He wanted to earn some money. His mother did not agree with
him, but after he had teased for whole weeks, she said: "Well, you may
try working part of each day." He sold papers and candy on the trains
running between Port Huron and Detroit. At first Mrs. Edison was very
nervous. She imagined that perhaps his train was getting wrecked, that
he had fallen under the wheels of the engine, and all sorts of horrid
things, but as he kept coming back home every night, safe and happy, she
stopped worrying. He was bright, and the men who talked and laughed with
him paid him a good deal of money for the papers and the nuts and
candies which he carried in a basket. He was a proud boy to hand over to
his mother the earnings of a week, which sometimes counted up to twenty
dollars.

Thomas was such a very busy person that the lessons he had with his
mother early in the mornings and his paper work on the train were not
enough to satisfy him, so he bought some old type, a printing-press, and
some ink rollers, and began making a little newspaper of his own. This
newspaper was only the size of a lady's pocket-handkerchief, but it was
so clever that he soon had five hundred subscribers, and he made ten
more dollars a week on that. The great English engineer, Stephenson, was
traveling on Thomas's train one day and was so pleased with the paper
that he bought a thousand copies. He said there were many newspapers
edited by grown-up men that were not one half as good. Remember about
this paper, and if ever you