not!

Books to a boy like young Edison are treasures-trove, in which is stored
the learning of all great and good and wise who have ever lived.

And the boy has to read, and read for a decade, in order to find that
books are not much after all.

When Edison saw the inside of that library and was told he could read any
or all of the books, he said, "If you please, Mister, I'll begin here."
And he tackled the first shelf, mentally deciding that he would go
through the books ten feet at a time.

A little later he bought at an auction fifty volumes of the "North
American Review," and moving the books up to his home at Port Huron
proceeded to read them.

The war was on--papers sold for ten cents each and business was good.

Edison was making money--and saving it. He only plunged on books.

Over at Mount Clemens, at the Springs, folks congregated, and there young
Edison took weekly trips selling papers.

On one such visit he rescued the little son of the station-agent from in
front of a moving train. In gratitude, the man took the boy to his house
and told him he must make it his home while in Mount Clemens; and then
after supper the youngster went down to the station; and what was more,
the station-agent took him in behind the ticket-window, where the
telegraph-instrument clicked off dots and dashes on a long strip of
paper.

Edison looked on with open mouth.

"Would you like to become a telegraph-operator?" asked the agent.

"Sure!" was the reply.

Already the boy had read up on the subject in his library of the "North
American Review," and he really knew the history of the thing better than
did the agent.

Edison was now a newsboy on the Grand Trunk, and he arranged his route so
as to spend every other night at Mount Clemens.

In a few months he could handle the key about as well as the
station-agent.

About this time the ice had carried out the telegraph-line between Port
Huron and Sarnia. The telegraph people were in sore straits. Edison
happened along and said to the local operator, "Come out here, Bill, on
this switch-engine and we'll fix things!" By short snorts of the whistle
for dots and long ones for dashes, they soon caught the ear of the
operator on the other side. He answered back, "What t'ell is the matter
with you fellows?" And Edison and the other operator roared with
laughter, so that the engineer thought their think-boxes needed
re-babbitting.

And that scheme of telegraphy with a stea