"Of course I will, Uncle John," replied Dora as eagerly and gratefully as she had made the same reply six years before. "With the money I can earn the next three summers, I can lessen college expenses a good deal." So it happened that the ambition of Dora's girlhood; largely through her own pluck and persistence, was realized in due season. Still, she always felt that Mr. Edison unknowingly had a large share in the making of her career; for when in after years she became an instructor in physics at an influential school, she could easily trace back her love for her subject to her interest in the early experiments upon the electric light. THE TRIUMPH OF GOODYEAR PART I In March, 1852, Lucy Hobart began a six months' visit with her grandparents who lived just outside Trenton, New Jersey. One morning at the breakfast table, Grandfather Hobart, whom most people called Lawyer Hobart, said to Lucy, "Little girl, a most important case is being tried at the court house this week. It may not be very interesting to a child, but I think that you, as well as Grandmother, ought to attend this morning. I want you to be able to say that you have heard the great Daniel Webster make a plea." "Do you mean Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Grandfather?" inquired Lucy. "I thought," she resumed rather timidly, for she feared Grandfather might think she was contradicting him, "I thought people didn't like him any more." "You come from a strong anti-slavery family, Lucy, the worst kind," answered Grandfather, good-humoredly. "Webster did seem to many people to sacrifice his ideal in that seventh of March speech two years ago, but he's a keen lawyer yet. His health is broken, though, from the criticism he has suffered. I don't believe he will live much longer. That's why I think you had better go to-day." "I should like to ever so much," replied Lucy. "Is it the Goodyear case?" inquired Grandmother. "Yes," replied Grandfather. "It's his case against Horace Day, who, I think, has been outrageously infringing his patents." "It's raining a little," remarked Grandmother. "Shall you take us if it keeps on?" "If you feel like going. If it hadn't been for Mr. Goodyear, you know, you couldn't have gone anyway on such a day," Grandfather added. "Why couldn't we?" inquired Lucy, after trying to think it out a few seconds. "My stars! Don't you, a Boston girl, know about Goodyear and his rubber goods?" "I don't believe so," answered Lucy. "Unless," she added after a pause, "you mean the man that advertises in the _Transcript_ every night. Ever since I could read, I've seen advertisements in the paper about rubber that's been heated to two hundred and eighty degrees."