has been obliged
to go outside its own proper domains to occupy some space in and about
the great Edison industrial buildings and space immediately adjacent. It
must be borne in mind that the laboratory is only the core of a group of
buildings devoted to production on a huge scale by hundreds of artisans.

Incidental mention has already been made of the laboratory at Edison's
winter residence in Florida, where he goes annually to spend a month or
six weeks. This is a miniature copy of the Orange laboratory, with its
machine shop, chemical-room, and general experimental department. While
it is only in use during his sojourn there, and carries no extensive
corps of assistants, the work done in it is not of a perfunctory nature,
but is a continuation of his regular activities, and serves to keep him
in touch with the progress of experiments at Orange, and enables him to
give instructions for their variation and continuance as their scope
is expanded by his own investigations made while enjoying what he calls
"vacation." What Edison in Florida speaks of as "loafing" would be for
most of us extreme and healthy activity in the cooler Far North.

A word or two may be devoted to the visitors received at the laboratory,
and to the correspondence. It might be injudicious to gauge the
greatness of a man by the number of his callers or his letters; but
they are at least an indication of the degree to which he interests
the world. In both respects, for these forty years, Edison has been a
striking example of the manner in which the sentiment of hero-worship
can manifest itself, and of the deep desire of curiosity to get
satisfaction by personal observation or contact. Edison's mail, like
that of most well-known men, is extremely large, but composed in no
small degree of letters--thousands of them yearly--that concern only the
writers, and might well go to the waste-paper basket without prolonged
consideration. The serious and important part of the mail, some personal
and some business, occupies the attention of several men; all such
letters finding their way promptly into the proper channels, often with
a pithy endorsement by Edison scribbled on the margin. What to do with
a host of others it is often difficult to decide, even when written by
"cranks," who imagine themselves subject to strange electrical ailments
from which Edison alone can relieve them. Many people write asking his
opinion as to a certain invention, or offering hi