fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

“I have always kept,” continued Mr. Edison, “strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable only as novelties to catch the popular fancy.”

“What makes you work?” I asked with real curiosity. “What impels you to this constant, tireless struggle? You have shown that you care comparatively nothing for the money it makes you, and you have no particular enthusiasm for the attending fame. What is it?”

“I like it,” he answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. “I don’t know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it, until it is finished; and then I hate it.”

“Hate it?” I said.

“Yes,” he affirmed, “when it is all done and is a success, I can’t bear the sight of it. I haven’t used a telephone in ten years, and I would go out of my way any day to miss an incandescent light.”

“You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life,” I ventured, “working eighteen hours a day.”

“Not at all,” he said. “You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object—one thing to which they stick, letting all else go.”

OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE INVENTORS.

“You believe, of course,” I suggested, “that much remains to be discovered in the realm of electricity?”

“It is the field of fields,” he answered. “We can’t talk of that, but it holds the secret which will reorganize the life of the world.”

“You have discovered much about it,” I said, smiling.

“Yes,” he said, “and yet very little in comparison with the possibilities that appear.”

“How many inventions have you patented?”

“Only six hundred,” he answered, “but I have made application for some three hundred more.”

“And do you expect to retire soon, after all this?”

“I hope not,” he said, almost pathetically. “I hope I will be able to work right on to the close. I shouldn’t care to loaf.”

Shouldn’t care to loaf! What a thought after fifty-two years of such magnificent achievement.

THE WIZARD AT HOME.

While the inventions of Thomas A. Edison keep him constantly in the public eye, as a man in private life he is comparatively unknown. If you should see him in his laboratory, buried deep in work, surrounded by battalions of machines and hosts of experimental appliances, dressed in his “shop clothes” spotted with chemicals, you would never suspect that, just seven hundred feet away, a palatial home awaits him.

Ten years ago he was an undomesticated man. His workshop and his chemical laboratory held such powerful sway over his mind that he was only supremely happy when “up to his eyes” in work. Gradually, almost insidiously, the “wizard” has been weaned away from the weaving of his spells, and now a new and more potent power than ever before controlled him has gained its mastery over him. This is the power of love. Though the great inventor even now works as few men of his age and accomplishments are in the habit of doing, the last few years have seen a steady relaxation of his toil. The time has passed when he was wont to lock himself in a room and work sixty hours at a stretch without taking more than an hour’s sleep at various intervals in that time.

MRS. EDISON IS ALSO AN INVENTOR OF GOOD ABILITY.

When Mr. Edison toils now, there is one who shares his labors with him. It is Mrs. Edison, his second wife. She is the daughter of John Miller, who invented the famous Miller mowing machine, and inherits a great deal of inventive ability. It is through this additional bond of genius that they are united. She is a helpmeet in the true sense of the word. It is said that they are now working on an invention which they will patent jointly.

Whether Mrs. Edison intends to participate in one of her husband’s inventions or not, she takes more than passing interest in all of his affairs, and has acquired, through her association with him, a vast amount of electrical and mechanical knowledge. When Mr. Edison met Miss Miller, twelve years ago, he was at the beginning of his fame. It was one of the most intensely busy periods of his career, his work engaging nearly every moment of his time.

The days of complete absorption in work have passed for him. His home-life has become necessary to him. Though he has had one or two relapses of “working fever,”—when he steadfastly refused to be moved from the laboratory by Mrs. Edison’s persuasions,—he has reached the period when he is glad to go to his home. Much honor is due to the woman who has wrought so marvelous a change in her husband. Those who knew Mr. Edison best predicted that his present wife would soon become a secondary consideration in his life. They are, from all accounts, mistaken.

The Edison home is one of the finest residences in New Jersey, and is furnished with all the conveniences and luxuries of a modern palace. It bears evidence of Mrs. Edison’s true taste and skillful management. The lower floor of the house is laid out in parlors, conservatories, and a magnificent dining room. Ponderous chandeliers bristling with electric-light bulbs hang from ceilings finished in open-work beams, exhibiting the best art of the builder. Mr. Edison has a fine library in his residence, though it does not contain so many scientific works as the library at his laboratory.

The upper floors are given up to sleeping rooms, and a special “den” for Mr. Edison. There he works out his plans, and has at hand the reference books he desires in chemistry, physics, heat, light, and electricity.

RISES EARLY AND WORKS LONG.

He is an early riser, and is ready for work at half-past six o’clock. His first daily occupation is to read the newspapers. He is anxious to know if the reporters who interviewed him wrote just what he said, for he dislikes, above all else, newspaper interviews that are not correct. He does not like to be misquoted, and is willing to go to any amount of trouble in order that his statements shall be reported without error. No matter how busily he may be engaged at the laboratory he will stop to look over an interview, and no one is more willing than he is to set a reporter right.

At half-past seven in the morning Mr. Edison starts for the laboratory. He usually walks, as the distance is short, and his physicians have ordered that he must take a certain amount of physical exercise every day. When he reaches the laboratory, he begins with a great rush, and starts men on certain phases of work which he planned the previous day. He usually has from fifty to seventy-five subjects on which he puts men to work. These subjects he prepares at home, between the time when he leaves the laboratory, half-past six, and midnight.

Every afternoon Mrs. Edison calls for her husband at the laboratory, and takes him away in