und, and he awakes in immediate and full possession of his
faculties, arising from the cot and going directly "back to the job"
without a moment's hesitation, just as a person wide awake would arise
from a chair and proceed to attend to something previously determined
upon.

Immediately outside the library is the famous stock-room, about which
much has been written and invented. Its fame arose from the fact that
Edison planned it to be a repository of some quantity, great or small,
of every known and possibly useful substance not readily perishable,
together with the most complete assortment of chemicals and drugs
that experience and knowledge could suggest. Always strenuous in his
experimentation, and the living embodiment of the spirit of the song, I
Want What I Want When I Want It, Edison had known for years what it
was to be obliged to wait, and sometimes lack, for some substance or
chemical that he thought necessary to the success of an experiment.
Naturally impatient at any delay which interposed in his insistent
and searching methods, and realizing the necessity of maintaining the
inspiration attending his work at any time, he determined to have within
his immediate reach the natural resources of the world.

Hence it is not surprising to find the stock-room not only a museum,
but a sample-room of nature, as well as a supply department. To a
casual visitor the first view of this heterogeneous collection is quite
bewildering, but on more mature examination it resolves itself into a
natural classification--as, for instance, objects pertaining to various
animals, birds, and fishes, such as skins, hides, hair, fur, feathers,
wool, quills, down, bristles, teeth, bones, hoofs, horns, tusks, shells;
natural products, such as woods, barks, roots, leaves, nuts, seeds,
herbs, gums, grains, flours, meals, bran; also minerals in great
assortment; mineral and vegetable oils, clay, mica, ozokerite, etc. In
the line of textiles, cotton and silk threads in great variety, with
woven goods of all kinds from cheese-cloth to silk plush. As for paper,
there is everything in white and colored, from thinnest tissue up to the
heaviest asbestos, even a few newspapers being always on hand. Twines
of all sizes, inks, waxes, cork, tar, resin, pitch, turpentine, asphalt,
plumbago, glass in sheets and tubes; and a host of miscellaneous
articles revealed on looking around the shelves, as well as an
interminable collection of chemicals, includi