He can
sleep at any time, and half an hour's rest will enable him to go on. When
he can't quite catch the idea, he closes up his brain-cells for ten
minutes and sleeps, then up and after it again.

Mrs. Edison occasionally sends meals down for the Wizard when he is on
the trail of a thought and does not want to take time to go home.

One day the dinner arrived when Edison was just putting salt on the tail
of an idea. There was no time to eat, but it occurred to the inventor
that if he would just quit thinking for ten minutes and sleep, he could
awaken with enough brain-power to throw the lariat successfully. So he
just leaned back, put his feet in the other chair and went to sleep.

The General Manager came in and saw the dinner on the table and Edison
sleeping, so he just sat down and began to eat the dinner. He ate it all,
and tiptoed out.

Edison slept twenty minutes, awoke, looked at the empty dishes, pulled
down his vest, took out his regular after-dinner cigar, lighted it and
smoked away in sweet satisfaction, fully believing that he had had his
dinner; and even after the General Manager had come in and offered to bet
him a dollar he hadn't, he was still of the same mind.

This spirit of sly joking fills the place, set afloat by the master
himself. Edison dearly loves a joke, and will quit work any time to hear
one. It is the five minutes' sleep and the good laugh that keep his brain
from becoming a hotbox--he gets his rest!

"When do you take your vacation, Mr. Edison?" a lady asked him.

"Election night every November," was the reply. And this is literally
true, for on that night there is a special wire run into the Orange
Clubhouse, and Edison takes the key and sits there until daylight taking
the returns, writing them out carefully in that copperplate Western Union
hand. He is as careful about his handwriting now as if he were writing
out train-orders.

"If I wanted to live a hundred years I would use neither tobacco nor
coffee," said Edison as we sat at lunch. "But you see I'd rather get a
little really good work done than live long and do nothing to speak of.
And so I spur what I am pleased to call my mind, at times with coffee and
a good cigar--just pass the matches, thank you! Some day some fellow will
invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of
this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if
some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all ther