ersity where all the students belonged to families of the
aristocracy; and the highest class in the university all wore little red
caps. He said HE wore one."

Of somewhat different caliber was "honest" John Kruesi, who first made
his mark at Menlo Park, and of whom Edison says: "One of the workmen
I had at Menlo Park was John Kruesi, who afterward became, from his
experience, engineer of the lighting station, and subsequently engineer
of the Edison General Electric Works at Schenectady. Kruesi was very
exact in his expressions. At the time we were promoting and putting
up electric-light stations in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England,
there would be delegations of different people who proposed to pay for
these stations. They would come to our office in New York, at '65,' to
talk over the specifications, the cost, and other things. At first, Mr.
Kruesi was brought in, but whenever a statement was made which he could
not understand or did not believe could be substantiated, he would blurt
right out among these prospects that he didn't believe it. Finally it
disturbed these committees so much, and raised so many doubts in their
minds, that one of my chief associates said: 'Here, Kruesi, we don't
want you to come to these meetings any longer. You are too painfully
honest.' I said to him: 'We always tell the truth. It may be deferred
truth, but it is the truth.' He could not understand that."

Various reasons conspired to cause the departure from Menlo Park midway
in the eighties. For Edison, in spite of the achievement with which its
name will forever be connected, it had lost all its attractions and all
its possibilities. It had been outgrown in many ways, and strange as the
remark may seem, it was not until he had left it behind and had settled
in Orange, New Jersey, that he can be said to have given definite shape
to his life. He was only forty in 1887, and all that he had done up to
that time, tremendous as much of it was, had worn a haphazard, Bohemian
air, with all the inconsequential freedom and crudeness somehow
attaching to pioneer life. The development of the new laboratory in West
Orange, just at the foot of Llewellyn Park, on the Orange Mountains,
not only marked the happy beginning of a period of perfect domestic and
family life, but saw in the planning and equipment of a model laboratory
plant the consummation of youthful dreams, and of the keen desire to
enjoy resources adequate at any moment to whatever