d a joyous peal of laughter that was heard in the adjoining rooms.
"We've got it, boys!" he cried, and the boys, a dozen of them, came
tumbling in. Arguments started as to how long it would last. One said an
hour. "Twenty-four hours," said Edison. They all vowed they would watch
it without sleep until the carbon film was destroyed and the light went
out. It lasted just forty hours.

Around Edison grew up a group of great workers--proud to be called
"Edison Men"--and some of these went out and made for themselves names
and fortunes.

Edison was born in Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven. Consequently, at this
writing he is sixty-three years old. He is big and looks awkward, because
his dusty-gray clothes do not fit, and he walks with a slight stoop. When
he wants clothes he telephones for them. His necktie is worn by the right
oblique, his iron-gray hair is combed by the wind. On his cherubic face
usually sits a half-quizzical, pleased smile, that fades into a look
plaintive and very gentle. The face is that of a man who has borne
burdens and known sorrow, of one who has overcome only after mighty
effort. I was going to say that Edison looks like a Roman Emperor, but I
recall that no Roman Emperor deserves to rank with him--not even Julius
Caesar! The face is that of Napoleon at Saint Helena, unsubdued.

The predominant characteristics of the man are his faith, hope,
good-cheer and courage. But at all times his humor is apt to be near the
surface.

Had Edison been as keen a businessman as Rockefeller, and kept his own in
his own hands, he would today be as rich as Rockefeller.

But Edison is worth, oh, say, two million dollars, and that is all any
man should be worth--it is all he needs. Yet there are at least a hundred
men in the world today, far richer than Edison, who have made their
fortunes wholly and solely by appropriating his ideas.

Edison has trusted people, and some of them have taken advantage of his
great, big, generous, boyish spirit to do him grievous wrong. But the
nearest I ever heard him come to making a complaint was when he said to
me, "Fra Elbertus, you never wrote but one really true thing!"

"Well, what was that, Mr. Edison?"

"You said, 'There is one thing worse than to be deceived by men, and that
is to distrust them.' Now people say I have been successful, and so I
have, in degree, and it has been through trusting men. There are a few
fellows who always know just what I am doing--I confide in