ash, and,
I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the
delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand
copies of the Free Press on trust. I was not much surprised when my
request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a
pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in
prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word, a point on which
I was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I
marched up stairs into the office of Wilbur F. Story himself and asked
to see him. I told him who I was and that I wanted fifteen hundred
copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed man stared at
me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper.
'Take that down stairs,' said he, 'and you will get what you want.'
And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.

"I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold
them, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph
operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made
I usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I
looked ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd
filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that
they wanted my papers. Before we left, I had sold a hundred or two at
five cents each. At the next station the place was fairly black with
people. I raised the 'ante' and sold three hundred papers at ten cents
each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred
my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there,
hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to
prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of
a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of
worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was
not a soul left in the meeting, all of the audience, including the
parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for
copies of the precious paper."

Though, as you will admit, Mr. Edison was a very successful newsboy,
he was not satisfied merely to sell papers, so at the age of fifteen
he began editing and publishing a paper of his own. To do this he
purchased a small hand printing press and fitted out, as best he
could, a printing office in an old freight car.

The _Grand Trunk Herald_, as the paper was called,