We had to set out at nine o’clock for Menlo Park. We had to dress in travelling costume, for the following day we were to leave for Boston, and my trunks were leaving the same day with my company, which preceded me by several hours. Our meal was, as usual, very bad, for in those days in America the food was unspeakably awful. At ten o’clock we took the train—a pretty special train, all decorated with flowers and banners, which they had been kind enough to prepare for me. But it was a painful journey all the same, for at every moment we had to pull up to allow another train to pass or an engine to manœuvre, or to wait to pass over the points. It was two o’clock in the morning when the train at last reached the station of Menlo Park, the residence of Thomas Edison. It was a very dark night, and the snow was falling silently in heavy flakes. A carriage was waiting, and the one lamp of this carriage served to light up the whole station, for orders had been given that the electric lights should be put out. I found my way with the help of Jarrett and some of my friends who had accompanied us from New York. The intense cold froze the snow as it fell, and we walked over veritable blocks of sharp, jagged ice, which crackled under our feet. Behind the first carriage was another heavier one, with only one horse and no lamp. There was room for five or six persons to crowd into this. We were ten in all. Jarrett, Abbey, my sister, and I took our places in the first one, leaving the others to get into the second. We looked like a band of conspirators. The dark night, the two mysterious carriages, the silence caused by the icy coldness, the way in which we were muffled in our furs, and our anxious expression as we glanced around us—all this made our visit to the celebrated Edison resemble a scene out of an operetta. The carriage rolled along, sinking deep into the snow and jolting terribly; the jolts made us dread every instant some tragi-comic accident. I cannot tell how long we had been rolling along, for, lulled by the movement of the carriage and buried in my warm furs, I was quietly dozing, when a formidable “Hip, hip, hurrah!” made us all jump, my travelling companions, the coachman, the horse, and I. As quick as thought the whole country was suddenly illuminated. Under the trees, on the trees, among the bushes, along the garden walks, lights flashed forth triumphantly.