News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1890-01-09

all about it are the wrinkles which
nothing but years of genial laughter
can impart. Altogether it is face
among a thousand. In repose it is
sadly solemn, like an OWLS. Let some
body crack joke and in an instant, if
you'd look at that face, you wouldn't
know it was the same Edison. When
he is In his inevitable suit of black.
and adorned with little white lawn
cravat, you might take him for a
preacher, if it were not for his face.
But in his smock frock you would have
hard work guessing what he was.
With this bingham institution flap
ping about his heels, the inventor goes
stamping around from room to room
in the great laboratory, overseeing
the different experiments that his
assistants are conducting. He has the
same little stoop at the hips that the
ploughmen acquire, but he walks rap
idIy. There are between fifty and one
hundred men there, engaged merely
in experimenting, at his bidding, and
reporting the results infinitely to him.
Each experiment is conducted in a
room apart, but Edison never loses
track of one. He holds in mind, while
bossing them all, exact remembrance
of how far each had progressed, what
the latest results and indications re-
ported to him were, what his direc-
tions and what to expect from them
at the next visit. In the experiment
room. as elsewhere he is wonderfully
observant man. He believes a good
part of invention consists in catching
nature at her pranks.
The slightest tricks of electricity
have resulted in some of the greatest
improvements in telegraphy, and from
past experience he has learned a watch
fullness which absolutely sticks out all
over him. Edison's movements are at
once quick and deliberate. There is no
nervous yielding. His purposes are
long ones, batsNr--he is the most
spasmodic of men. To the fellow who
works by fits and starts Edison's sue
cess is comforting, when a million old
fogies are rehearsing the story of the
tortoise and the hare.
AN EXTREMELY ACTIVE MIND.
There is something mercurial in his
way of work. He flies from one thing
to another, and, his workmen say, tires
quickly of thing. Then it is long
odds he will order il moved out of the
way until his interest in it is refreshed
by rest and absence from it. Mean
time he will set with a feverish energy
about something else. But Edison is
like electricity itself.
No one can tell what he will do
next. At times he will take fad in
his head that some work must be done
nights. Then he will tell the expert
mentors they are lazy lot of chaps,
and it's got to stop. He will order
them all to report early in the evening,
and chances are they'll sit around all
night and do little or nothing. By
the third night they'll do nothing at all
except eat lunch and tell funny stories,
and then the bit of energy and the
scheme of night-work will have died
natural deaths.
At other times the persistence with
which Edison works and keeps those
about him working is something I'M
parallelled save in the histories of
great wars and great newspapers. If
he gets especially interested in an ex-
pertinent he will never leave the build
ing for days. He works night and
day with meagre allowance of sleep
that would throw an ordinary man
under such mental strain as his into
brain fever.
His meals at such times are brought
to the laboratory, either from his house
five minutes distant or from the little
hotel at the foot of the hill, stones
throw OF so from the works. He eats
at the bench and works steadily mean
time. What is brought him to eat he
doesn't care SO long as pie is included.
These are the times when he accom-
plishes wonders in the way of keeping
awake. Frequently he has spent five
days and nights in the laboratory, "de-
barred from the luxuries of baths and
DarDerS anu solicit 1water," working
and snatching altogether
maybe three hours of sleep in forty
eight. In his room in the laboratory
he has reclining chair and in the IN
tervals of his task, while waiting for
piece of lathe work necessary to his
he lies down and il sec
ond is fast asleep.
Edison's argument is that so long as
he can continue to do that his nerves
are unframed. Such sleep of twenty
or half an hour at a time he
holds to be just as good, so far as it
goes, as sleep taken under more favor
able conditions. He is man of mar
vellous recuperative force, and says
half hours sleep in the middle of an
will clear his head as rain
does an overladen atmosphere.
Edison is too deaf for any comfort.
He told reporter that he expected to
live to ninety years of age, barring ac-
cidents.