On his return from the Emin relief expedition, Stanley revisited the United States, accompanied by his bride whom he had lately married. He gave lectures in several of the larger cities of the country on his surprising adventures in Africa. He was now prematurely aged by his terrible experiences, and though his eye was still bright and his frame alert, care and privation had whitened his hair, exposure had darkened his skin and left its wrinkled impress on his forehead. Everywhere he was received with the greatest enthusiasm and followed by eager thousands, who gazed upon his face and hung with rapture on his words. In 1892 he returned to England, and availing himself of his British nationality, stood for Parliament in the District of Lambeth, City of London, as a Conservative candidate. Much to the surprise and grief of his friends he was defeated and since then he has remained in private life. [Signature: Noah Brooks.] THOMAS ALVA EDISON[24] [Footnote 24: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.] By CLARENCE COOK (Born 1847) [Illustration: Thomas Alva Edison.] As someone has called Leonardo da Vinci "the great Italian Yankee," because of his multifarious and ingenious suggestions in the world of material things, so our own Edison may be called "the Yankee Leonardo," for, with a curiosity ranging over the whole world of nature, equal to that of the Italian, and with a fecundity of invention no less bewildering, he unites, like Leonardo, an imaginative and poetical vein that lifts his devices into the domain of Art. Yet Edison is in no respect a graceful or romantic figure such as Leonardo was. He reminds us rather, by the weird and cosmic nature of his speculations and inventions, of some one of the beings created by the Norse mythologists: a nineteenth century gnome, rough, shaggy, uncouth, wholly absorbed in his search among the secrets of nature, and, while working always for the good of mankind, dwelling in a world apart, and with neither time nor inclination to mix in human affairs.