anded at Plymouth Rock so many,
many years ago should come back to earth, how many strange sights
would greet them! No longer would they be permitted to ride in a
slow, clumsy wagon, but, instead, would ride in an electric car.
Furthermore, when night came, instead of the tallow candle, they
would marvel at the brilliant electric lights. Wouldn't it be fun to
start the phonograph and watch them stare in astonishment as "the
wooden box" talked to them? But the most fun would be to take them
to the moving picture show and hear what they would say.

Odd as it seems at first, all these marvelous inventions, and many
others, are the result of one man's work; in fact, this man has
thought out so many marvelous inventions that the whole world agrees
that he is the greatest inventor that has ever lived. Should you like
to hear the life story of one who is so truly great? I am sure you
would, for in the best sense he is a self-made American.

But, you ask, what is a self-made American? He is one born in poverty
who has had to struggle hard for everything he has ever had; one who
has had to force his way to success through all sorts of obstacles.

This great inventor first saw the light of day in the humble home of a
poor laboring man who lived in Milan, a small canal town in the state
of Ohio. In 1854 when Thomas A. Edison, for that is his name, was
seven years of age, his parents moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where
most of his boyhood days were spent.

As we should naturally expect, Thomas was sent to school, but his
teachers did not understand him and his progress was very poor.
Finally his mother took him out of school and taught him herself. This
she was able to do, for, before she married, she was a successful
school teacher in Canada.

Later in life, in speaking of his mother, he said: "I was always a
careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber I should
have probably turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her
goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. I remember
I never used to be able to get along at school. I don't know why it
was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that my
teachers never sympathized with me, and that my father thought that I
was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a
dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never
misunderstood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was
so tr