[Illustration: Edison Listening to his Phonograph.] There is one great invention, however, for which Edison deserves credit, both as discoverer and practical inventor--the phonograph. Here was a genuine discovery. The phonograph knows no other parent than Edison, and he has brought it to its present condition by devotion and tireless skill. I have always believed in the phonograph as an instrument destined to play some day an important part among the blessings that ingenuity has given to man. There are still obstacles in the way of its practical success, but that the missing screw or spring--perhaps no more than that--will be found in the near future, is not doubted by any competent observer. Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847, at Milan, Erie County, O., an obscure canal village. When a small boy, his family, a most humble one (his father being a village jack-of-all-trades, living upon odd jobs done for neighboring farmers), moved to Port Huron, Mich., where Edison's boyhood was passed. There his father was in turn tailor, well-digger, nursery-man, dealer in grain, lumber, and farm lands. His parents were of Dutch-Scotch descent and gave him the iron constitution that enables him to-day, at the age of forty-seven, to tire out the most robust of his assistants. One of his ancestors lived to the age of one hundred and two, and another to the age of one hundred and three, so that we may reasonably expect the famous inventor to open the door for us to still other wonders of which we do not yet even dream. His mother, born in Massachusetts, had a good education and at one time taught school in Canada. Of regular schooling, young Edison had but two months in his life. Whatever else he knew as a boy he learned from his mother. There are no records showing extraordinary promise on his part. He was an omnivorous reader, having an intense curiosity about the world and its great men. At ten years of age he was reading Hume's "England," Gibbon's "Rome," the Penny Encyclopædia, and some books on chemistry. At the age of twelve he entered upon his life work as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada and the Michigan Central, selling papers, books, candies, etc., to the passengers. "Were you one of the train-boys," he was once asked, "who sold figs in boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?" "If I recollect aright," he replied, with a merry twinkle, "the bottoms of my boxes were a good inch." [Illustration: From Edison's Newspaper, the "Grand Trunk Herald."]