them in the
cellar of the station at Pearl Street. As I was on all the time, I would
take a nap of an hour or so in the daytime--any time--and I used to
sleep on those tubes in the cellar. I had two Germans who were testing
there, and both of them died of diphtheria, caught in the cellar, which
was cold and damp. It never affected me."

It is worth pausing just a moment to glance at this man taking a fitful
rest on a pile of iron pipe in a dingy building. His name is on the
tip of the world's tongue. Distinguished scientists from every part of
Europe seek him eagerly. He has just been decorated and awarded high
honors by the French Government. He is the inventor of wonderful new
apparatus, and the exploiter of novel and successful arts. The magic of
his achievements and the rumors of what is being done have caused a wild
drop in gas securities, and a sensational rise in his own electric-light
stock from $100 to $3500 a share. Yet these things do not at all affect
his slumber or his democratic simplicity, for in that, as in everything
else, he is attending strictly to business, "doing the thing that is
next to him."

Part of the rush and feverish haste was due to the approach of frost,
which, as usual in New York, suspended operations in the earth; but the
laying of the conductors was resumed promptly in the spring of 1882; and
meantime other work had been advanced. During the fall and winter months
two more "Jumbo" dynamos were built and sent to London, after which the
construction of six for New York was swiftly taken in hand. In the month
of May three of these machines, each with a capacity of twelve hundred
incandescent lamps, were delivered at Pearl Street and assembled on the
second floor. On July 5th--owing to the better opportunity for ceaseless
toil given by a public holiday--the construction of the operative part
of the station was so far completed that the first of the dynamos
was operated under steam; so that three days later the satisfactory
experiment was made of throwing its flood of electrical energy into a
bank of one thousand lamps on an upper floor. Other tests followed in
due course. All was excitement. The field-regulating apparatus and the
electrical-pressure indicator--first of its kind--were also tested,
and in turn found satisfactory. Another vital test was made at this
time--namely, of the strength of the iron structure itself on which the
plant was erected. This was done by two structural exp