"How should you like to work for me?" "I should like to ever so much. But I don't know enough yet to correct high school papers. All I can do is housework." "And that's just what I want of you, Dora. You didn't know I had leased the Atlantic House, did you?" "No, indeed, Uncle John. Do you mean you're coming here summers to manage that hotel?" "Yes, for the next ten years, anyway, I expect. Do you like to fill lamps and clean chimneys, Dora?" "Why, that's the part of the housework I can do best." "That's good. Will you work for me twelve weeks this summer for three dollars and a half a week?" "Oh, Uncle John, of course I will. But isn't there gas in that hotel?" "No, just kerosene lamps. I know some people like gas better, but I don't. It's too dangerous and it's bad for one's eyes. So even if I could spare the money this summer, I shouldn't pipe the house for gas. It can't be many years before there will be a cleaner and better light. The Wizard will soon attend to that." "What do you mean, Uncle? Who is the Wizard?" "The most wonderful man in America, Dora. His name is Thomas Alva Edison, and he lives in Menlo Park, New Jersey, not far from where I teach. I know him a little. He is the man who, I think, best represents the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century. He's an inventor, but a systematic one. He doesn't trust to chance." "What has he invented, Uncle? I don't think I ever heard of him." "I fancy not, Dora. So far his work has been largely improvements on inventions already made. Just now, as I said, he is experimenting to find a way of lighting buildings by electricity. He will succeed, I know; and I shall wait for his electric light. I expect, though, to wait a number of years yet, for even though he should discover the secret within a few months, no one can supply the necessary apparatus. It will take years, I'm sure, before electric lighting is cheap enough to be common." "How did you get acquainted with such a wonderful man, Uncle?" "I knew him first when I was getting ready for college. Like you, I had my own way to pay; and I learned to be a telegraph operator. The summer before I entered Harvard I had a place in the Boston office of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Mr. Edison was a young man too, and he came to work in the office while I was there. "The night he came we tried to play a joke on him, but the joke was decidedly on ourselves. Edison wore an old linen duster, and looked so much like a country boy that we thought he couldn't know much about taking messages. So we arranged with a skillful New York operator to send a long message faster and faster, and we saw to it that the new boy had to take it. To our surprise, he proved the fastest operator we had ever known and very carelessly and easily handled the quick dots and dashes. The joke was on the New York operator, too, for after a while Edison signaled, 'Say, young man, why don't you change off and send with your other foot?'