This remark hurt the lad’s feelings, and when he went home and told his mother about it, she was very much annoyed and decided that she would look after the boy’s education herself. She had once been a teacher in Ontario and she felt sure that her boy had it in him to make good if he only got a chance. Many years later Edison wrote of this incident: “My mother was the most enthusiastic champion that a boy ever had and I determined right then that I would be worthy of her and show that her confidence in me was not misplaced. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for, some one that I must not disappoint.” Under his mother’s tuition, Thomas Edison made good progress. He was constantly asking questions. He wanted to know the why and the wherefore of everything he saw. Sometimes he exhausted the patience of those around him but his mother seemed as eager to help him as he was to seek information, and although he missed some things by not being at school, he gained in other ways. One thing his mother especially taught him was to love good books and this passion for reading has remained with him all his life. When he was eleven years old Thomas Edison became interested in chemistry. He read a book on physics and at once began to make experiments on his own. His chum and chief companion at this time was a Dutch boy named Michael Oates. He persuaded Michael that if he took a large enough quantity of Seidlitz powders the gases generated would enable him to fly. Michael tried the experiment with disastrous results. For a time he suffered agonies and his cries attracted much attention, and Thomas Edison’s mother found it necessary to use the “switch” on her son. But his interest in chemistry was very great. He used the cellar of the house to try his experiments and collected no less than two hundred bottles from various places. These bottles contained the chemicals with which he was constantly experimenting and he marked them all “poison,” so that no one else would touch them. Most of his spare time he spent in that cellar and whatever little pocket-money came his way he spent on purchasing chemicals from the local drug-store. He felt keenly the need for money wherewith to buy chemicals and after much coaxing he succeeded in persuading his parents to allow him to sell newspapers and magazines on the train that ran between Port Huron and Detroit. The enterprise was his own and besides selling papers he sold bread, candy and fruit. Although only twelve years of age, he had an amazing amount of energy and enterprise and soon he made sufficient money to have all the cash needed for chemical experiments.