"Edison sat down and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them, and threw them on the floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster and faster went Edison's fingers, until the rapidity with which the messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours' work there flashed from New York the salutation: "'Hello!' "'Hello yourself!' ticked Edison. "'Who are you?' rattled into the Boston office. "'Tom Edison.' "'You are the first man in the country', ticked in the instrument, 'that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I'm proud to know you.'" While employed as telegraph operator Edison's inventive mind was hard at work. Accordingly, when but seventeen years of age he invented the Duplex telegraph which made it possible "to send two messages in opposite directions on the same wire at the same time, without causing any confusion." Though a brilliant operator, young Edison found it difficult to hold a job, as he was always neglecting his regular work to "fool with experiments," as his employers put it. Accordingly, when twenty-one years of age, he found himself in New York City seeking work. Suppose we invite Mr. Edison to tell us of this dramatic period of his life. "On the third day after my arrival, while sitting in the office of the Laws Gold Repeating Telegraph Company, the complicated general instrument for sending messages on all the lines suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys,--a boy from every broker in the street, rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker's wire was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it."