essenger from the laboratory of the world's greatest
inventor bearing a letter requesting an audience a few hours later.

"Being the teacher to whom reference is made, I am now quite willing to
confess that for the remainder of that afternoon, less than a problem
in Euclid would have been sufficient to disqualify me for the remaining
scholastic duties of the hour. I felt it, of course, to be no small
honor for a humble teacher to be called to the sanctum of Thomas A.
Edison. The letter, however, gave no intimation of the nature of the
object for which I had been invited to appear before Mr. Edison....

"When I was presented to Mr. Edison his way of setting forth the
mission he had designated for me was characteristic of how a great mind
conceives vast undertakings and commands great things in few words. At
this time Mr. Edison had discovered that the fibre of a certain bamboo
afforded a very desirable carbon for the electric lamp, and the variety
of bamboo used was a product of Japan. It was his belief that in other
parts of the world other and superior varieties might be found, and to
that end he had dispatched explorers to bamboo regions in the valleys
of the great South American rivers, where specimens were found of
extraordinary quality; but the locality in which these specimens were
found was lost in the limitless reaches of those great river-bottoms.
The great necessity for more durable carbons became a desideratum so
urgent that the tireless inventor decided to commission another explorer
to search the tropical jungles of the Orient.

"This brings me then to the first meeting of Edison, when he set forth
substantially as follows, as I remember it twenty years ago, the purpose
for which he had called me from my scholastic duties. With a quizzical
gleam in his eye, he said: 'I want a man to ransack all the tropical
jungles of the East to find a better fibre for my lamp; I expect it to
be found in the palm or bamboo family. How would you like that job?'
Suiting my reply to his love of brevity and dispatch, I said, 'That
would suit me.' 'Can you go to-morrow?' was his next question. 'Well,
Mr. Edison, I must first of all get a leave of absence from my Board of
Education, and assist the board to secure a substitute for the time of
my absence. How long will it take, Mr. Edison?' 'How can I tell? Maybe
six months, and maybe five years; no matter how long, find it.' He
continued: 'I sent a man to South America to find w