ly Dale the other day, a woman told me that she had talked
with the mother of Edison, and the spirit-voice had said: "It is true I
was a Canadian schoolteacher, and this at a time when very few women
taught, but I am the mother of him you call Thomas A. Edison. I studied
and read and wrote and in degree I educated myself. I had great
ambition--I thirsted to know, to do, to become. But I was hampered and
chained in an uncongenial atmosphere. My body struggled with its bonds,
so that I grew weak, worried, sick, and died, leaving my boy to struggle
his way alone. My only regret at death was the thought that I was leaving
my boy. I thought that through my marriage I had killed my
career--sacrificed myself. But my boy became heir to all my hunger for
knowledge, and he has accomplished what I dimly dreamed. He has made
plain what I only guessed. From my position here I have whispered secrets
to him that only the freed spirits knew. I once thought my life was a
failure, but now I know that the word 'failure' is a term used only by
foolish mortals. In the universal sense there is no such thing as
failure."

Just here it seems to me that some one once said that we get no mind
without brain. But we had here the brain of the medium, otherwise this
alleged message from the spirit realm would not be ours. So we will not
now tarry to discuss psychic phenomena, but go on to other things. But
the woman from Lilly Dale said something, just the same.

* * * * *

Edison was born at the little village of Milan, Ohio,
which lies six miles from Norwalk on the road between Cleveland and
Toledo.

On the breaking out of the Civil War the boy was fourteen years old. His
parents had moved to Sarnia, Canada, and then across to Port Huron.

Young Edison used to ride up and down from Detroit on the passenger-boats
and sell newspapers. His standing with the Detroit "Free Press," backed
up by his good-cheer and readiness to help the passengers with their
babies and bundles, gave him free passage on all railroads and
steamboat-lines.

There was a public library at Detroit where any one could read, but books
could not be taken away.

All Edison's spare time was spent at the library, which to him was a
gold-mine. All his mother's books had been sold, stolen or given away.

And ahoy there, all you folks who have books! Do you not know what books
are to a child hungry for truth, that has no books?

Of course you do