The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1878-12-12

was an odu boy, generally nail asleep,
but with the swoop of lightning when
he was aroused.
Two years later he began life for him-
self as train-boy on the Grand Trur K
Railroad, and went through an appren-
ticeship calculated to develop his latent
shrewdress, mother wit, cleverness and
self-poise to the utmost. 1t was Car
lyle who said that self-poiss makes the
man; man who can not balance him.
self comfortably on a pins point is
bound to be q nobody all his life; and
to learn the art of balancing yourself
on pins point, there is nothing like q
few months service as train-boy, or. q
few months vagabondage as newsboy
or boot-black. The boy was enterpris-
ing, went into business with a will, and
soon had four assistants. An old, de-
faced deguerreotype taken at this period
of his life, shows a little fellow, with a
round, good-natured face, and dirty
hands, folding newspapers. The lips
are wreathed with an expressive grin it
is Horace Greeley in miniature, with a
glazed cap on the back of his head, and
a greasy muller round his neck. But
the face has an expression of sterling
honesty that one seldom meets in train
boys; and, withal, there is dream in
the boys eyes that tells volumes to an
acute observer-that far-away expires
sion of thinking of something else, that
marks the strange, double life of the
man of extraordinary intellect in the
most ordinary affairs.
His eccentricity soon found a way to
make an exhibition of itself. He had
his headquarters in the smoking section
OF an old baggage-car, and here he sur
rounded himself with bottles and sec.
ond-hand retorts, and conducted his
rude experiments while the train was
rushing along at the rate of so miles
an hour, the car, which was spring.
less, humping up and down and
spelling his calculations at most
inopportune moments. By lounging
about the Office of the Detroit Free Press
he caught the knack of setting type,
and by and by, at favorable oppor.
tunity, he bought 800 pounds of old
type and started newspaper on the
train, which he called the Grand Trunk
Hcrald-a little weekly about as large
as an old-fashioned window-pane. 1t
was shown to some traveller, and got
notice in the London Times as the first
venture OF the kind ever essayed on
railway train. The boy had not capital
enough to buy press, and, so took his
impressions by pressing the sheets upon
the type with the palms of his grimy lit
tie hands. The literary matter was con-
tributed by brakemen, baggagemen,
and other employees, and, as may be in
ferred, was racy, piquant, and some
times decidedly personal. In 1868,
while the battle of Pittsburg Landing
was in progress, he conceived the idea
OF telegraphing ahead memoranda of
news he was about to publish and have
them bulletined at stations along the
route, and thus raised the circulation of
his paper to a figure that made it profit
able. His interest in telegraphy dates
from this incident, his career, as so
many others have done, thus turning
upon an apparently trivial venture
Presently he met with an accident in
his railroad laboratory, and blew out
one wall of the baggage car, or some
thing less serious, which put the con-
ductor in fright, and he was evicted,
laboratory, bottles aud all, to make
room for train-boy of less original in
tellect.
He had kept on absorbing books,
though, during his brief career as
train-boy, and, when he found himself
adrift in the world, he knew Newton's
Principal and Ure's scientific dlctiona-
ries by heart not q large capital, either
or Intellectually. The real
cause of the accident he averred to be
the dropping of a bottle of phosphoric
acid while the car was in motion. The
laboratory was in flames instantly; in
rushed the conductor, threw the whole
overheard, and gave the
budding scientist sound thrashing.
His next unlucky adventure was the
publication of a newspaper entitled
Paul Pry, and, true to it's title, at Port
Huron. The result was that an enraged
who h d been numerically
lampooned, threw the editor into the
river. although, as he claims, the squib
was not within the limits of the legally
hbelous. He now appropriated the
cellar of his fathers house at Port
Huron to the purposes of experiments
in telegraphy, where he constructed
batteries out of stovepipe wire, old
bottles, rusty nails, and such scraps of
zinc as he could pick up about the house,
or about other peoples houses, which
were all the same to the lawless young
scientist and his equally lawless
assistants. But what he knew
of telegraphing as practical
art came about through an act of hero
ism. One day at Port Clemens he
rushed before an advancing train and |
saved the station-master's little bow
from instant death Tho rraan uar