elements are unevenly distributed.

I think to most of us West Virginia had always been a rather hazy
proposition, and we were glad to get a clear impression of it. We
certainly became pretty intimate with the backbone of the continent--or
with its many backbones, as its skeleton seems to be a very multiplex
affair. The backbones of continents usually get broken in many places,
but they serve their purpose just as well. In fact, our old Earth is
more like an articulate than a vertebrate. Its huge shell is in many
sections.

One of our camps we named Camp Lee, the name of the owner of the farm.
One of the boys there, Robert E. Lee, made himself very useful in
bringing wood and doing other errands.

A privation, which I think Mr. Edison and I felt more than did the
others, was the scanty or delayed war news; the local papers, picked up
here and there, gave only brief summaries, and when in the larger towns
we could get some of the great dailies, the news was a day or two old.
When one has hung on the breath of the newspapers for four exciting
years, one is lost when cut off from them.

Such a trip as we were taking was, of course, a kind of a lark,
especially to the younger members of the party. Upon Alleghany Mountain,
near Barton, West Virginia, a farmer was cradling oats on a side-hill
below the road. Our procession stopped, and the irrepressible Ford and
Firestone were soon taking turns at cradling oats, but with doubtful
success. A photograph shows the farmer and Mr. Ford looking on with
broad smiles, watching Mr. Firestone with the fingers of the cradle
tangled in the oats and weeds, a smile on his face also, but decidedly
an equivocal smile--the trick was not so easy as it looked. Evidently
Mr. Ford had not forgotten his cradling days on the home farm in
Michigan.

Camp-life is a primitive affair, no matter how many conveniences you
have, and things of the mind keep pretty well in the background.
Occasionally around the camp-fire we drew Edison out on chemical
problems, and heard formula after formula come from his lips as if he
were reading them from a book. As a practical chemist he perhaps has
few, if any, equals in this country. It was easy to draw out Mr. Ford on
mechanical problems. There is always pleasure and profit in hearing a
master discuss his own art.

A plunge into the South for a Northern man is in many ways a plunge into
the Past. As soon as you get into Virginia there is a change. Things and