when a man
looked in I would give a big puff, and every time they saw that they
would go away and begin again. The English Channel is a holy terror, all
right, but it didn't affect me. I must be out of balance."

While in Paris, Edison had met Sir John Pender, the English "cable
king," and had received an invitation from him to make a visit to his
country residence: "Sir John Pender, the master of the cable system of
the world at that time, I met in Paris. I think he must have lived among
a lot of people who were very solemn, because I went out riding with
him in the Bois de Boulogne and started in to tell him American stories.
Although he was a Scotchman he laughed immoderately. He had the faculty
of understanding and quickly seeing the point of the stories; and
for three days after I could not get rid of him. Finally I made him
a promise that I would go to his country house at Foot's Cray, near
London. So I went there, and spent two or three days telling him
stories.

"While at Foot's Cray, I met some of the backers of Ferranti, then
putting up a gigantic alternating-current dynamo near London to send
ten or fifteen thousand volts up into the main district of the city for
electric lighting. I think Pender was interested. At any rate the people
invited to dinner were very much interested, and they questioned me as
to what I thought of the proposition. I said I hadn't any thought about
it, and could not give any opinion until I saw it. So I was taken up
to London to see the dynamo in course of construction and the methods
employed; and they insisted I should give them some expression of my
views. While I gave them my opinion, it was reluctantly; I did not want
to do so. I thought that commercially the thing was too ambitious, that
Ferranti's ideas were too big, just then; that he ought to have started
a little smaller until he was sure. I understand that this installation
was not commercially successful, as there were a great many troubles.
But Ferranti had good ideas, and he was no small man."

Incidentally it may be noted here that during the same year (1889) the
various manufacturing Edison lighting interests in America were brought
together, under the leadership of Mr. Henry Villard, and consolidated
in the Edison General Electric Company with a capital of no less than
$12,000,000 on an eight-per-cent.-dividend basis. The numerous Edison
central stations all over the country represented much more than that
sum, a