same manner I had worked out for the Manhattan
Elevated Railroad a system of electric trains, and had the control of
each car centred at one place--multiple control. This was afterward
worked out and made practical by Frank Sprague. I got up a slot contact
for street railways, and have a patent on it--a sliding contact in a
slot. Edward Lauterbach was connected with the Third Avenue Railroad in
New York--as counsel--and I told him he was making a horrible mistake
putting in the cable. I told him to let the cable stand still and send
electricity through it, and he would not have to move hundreds of tons
of metal all the time. He would rue the day when he put the cable in."
It cannot be denied that the prophecy was fulfilled, for the cable was
the beginning of the frightful financial collapse of the system, and was
torn out in a few years to make way for the triumphant "trolley in the
slot."

Incidental glimpses of this work are both amusing and interesting.
Hughes, who was working on the experimental road with Mr. Edison,
tells the following story: "Villard sent J. C. Henderson, one of his
mechanical engineers, to see the road when it was in operation, and we
went down one day--Edison, Henderson, and I--and went on the locomotive.
Edison ran it, and just after we started there was a trestle sixty feet
long and seven feet deep, and Edison put on all the power. When we went
over it we must have been going forty miles an hour, and I could see the
perspiration come out on Henderson. After we got over the trestle and
started on down the track, Henderson said: 'When we go back I will walk.
If there is any more of that kind of running I won't be in it myself.'"
To the correspondence of Grosvenor P. Lowrey we are indebted for a
similar reminiscence, under date of June 5, 1880: "Goddard and I have
spent a part of the day at Menlo, and all is glorious. I have ridden at
forty miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway--and we ran off the
track. I protested at the rate of speed over the sharp curves, designed
to show the power of the engine, but Edison said they had done it often.
Finally, when the last trip was to be taken, I said I did not like
it, but would go along. The train jumped the track on a short curve,
throwing Kruesi, who was driving the engine, with his face down in the
dirt, and another man in a comical somersault through some underbrush.
Edison was off in a minute, jumping and laughing, and declaring it a
most b