fare was picked up in Detroit,
and type was also bought, some of it being placed on the train so that
composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one so mechanical in
his tastes as Edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the
printing art, and thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which
he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. Only one
or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance
can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The thing was
indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less
than fifteen years old. The literary style is good, there are only a few
trivial slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what would be
interesting news and gossip. The price was three cents a copy, or eight
cents a month for regular subscribers, and the circulation ran up to
over four hundred copies an issue. This was by no means the result of
mere public curiosity, but attested the value of the sheet as a genuine
newspaper, to which many persons in the railroad service along the
line were willing contributors. Indeed, with the aid of the railway
telegraph, Edison was often able to print late news of importance, of
local origin, that the distant regular papers like those of Detroit,
which he handled as a newsboy, could not get. It is no wonder that this
clever little sheet received the approval and patronage of the English
engineer Stephenson when inspecting the Grand Trunk system, and was
noted by no less distinguished a contemporary than the London Times as
the first newspaper in the world to be printed on a train in motion.
The youthful proprietor sometimes cleared as much as twenty to thirty
dollars a month from this unique journalistic enterprise.

But all this extra work required attention, and Edison solved the
difficulty of attending also to the newsboy business by the employment
of a young friend, whom he trained and treated liberally as an
understudy. There was often plenty of work for both in the early days
of the war, when the news of battle caused intense excitement and large
sales of papers. Edison, with native shrewdness already so strikingly
displayed, would telegraph the station agents and get them to bulletin
the event of the day at the front, so that when each station was reached
there were eager purchasers waiting. He recalls in particular the
sensation caused by the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landi