ork, not, however, working as many hours or as hard as I have
in the past. At seventy five I expect to wear loud waistcoats with
fancy buttons; also gaiter tops; at eighty I expect to learn how to play
bridge whist and talk foolishly to the ladies. At eighty-five I expect
to wear a full-dress suit every evening at dinner, and at ninety--well,
I never plan more than thirty years ahead."
The reference to clothes is interesting, as it is one of the few
subjects in which Edison has no interest. It rather bores him. His dress
is always of the plainest; in fact, so plain that, at the Bergmann shops
in New York, the children attending a parochial Catholic school were
wont to salute him with the finger to the head, every time he went by.
Upon inquiring, he found that they took him for a priest, with his dark
garb, smooth-shaven face, and serious expression. Edison says: "I get
a suit that fits me; then I compel the tailors to use that as a jig or
pattern or blue-print to make others by. For many years a suit was used
as a measurement; once or twice they took fresh measurements, but these
didn't fit and they had to go back. I eat to keep my weight constant,
hence I need never change measurements." In regard to this, Mr. Mallory
furnishes a bit of chat as follows: "In a lawsuit in which I was a
witness, I went out to lunch with the lawyers on both sides, and the
lawyer who had been cross-examining me stated that he had for a client
a Fifth Avenue tailor, who had told him that he had made all of Mr.
Edison's clothes for the last twenty years, and that he had never seen
him. He said that some twenty years ago a suit was sent to him from
Orange, and measurements were made from it, and that every suit since
had been made from these measurements. I may add, from my own personal
observation, that in Mr. Edison's clothes there is no evidence but that
every new suit that he has worn in that time looks as if he had been
specially measured for it, which shows how very little he has changed
physically in the last twenty years."
Edison has never had any taste for amusements, although he will indulge
in the game of "Parchesi" and has a billiard-table in his house. The
coming of the automobile was a great boon to him, because it gave him
a form of outdoor sport in which he could indulge in a spirit of
observation, without the guilty feeling that he was wasting valuable
time. In his automobile he has made long tours, and with his family has
|