One day in 1862, the train on which young Edison was selling newspapers was doing some shunting at Mount Clemens station. On a track near he saw the little son of Mr. J. MacKenzie, the station agent, playing, and a car, without a brakeman, was rapidly approaching. Edison instantly dropped his papers and made a dash for the child. A few seconds later and rescue would have been impossible but as it was he saved the child and jumped from the tracks just as the wheel of the car struck his heel. As a reward for this, Mr. MacKenzie offered to teach Edison the art of telegraphy, something which the lad had long wanted to learn. He eagerly accepted the offer and while he still sold newspapers on the train, he spent every spare moment learning telegraphy. At this time a seemingly unfortunate thing happened. His interest in chemical and electrical experiments was such that he had secured permission to use part of a car as a laboratory, and as the train journeys were long he spent many hours in that car. One day, a sudden jolting caused a stick of phosphorus to fall from the shelf to the floor where it burst into flames and set fire to the car. The conductor, who was a quick-tempered man, boxed Edison’s ears so soundly that the lad became deaf, an infirmity which has remained with him throughout life. The conductor was so enraged that he put the boy and his entire laboratory off at Mount Clemens station. Edison’s delicate health and his slowness at school had seemed a severe handicap. Added to this now was a deafness which threatened to make his progress in life harder than ever. His expulsion from the train was a humiliating experience for Edison but he was by no means discouraged. Once more he fitted up his laboratory at home and continued his experiments. There were many protests from some members of the family who feared chemical experiments but his mother had great faith in him and met objections by saying: “Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him. God is taking care of him.” In 1863, when he was sixteen, Edison got a position as telegraph operator at Stratford Junction, Ontario, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He soon found out that the most expert telegraph operators knew practically nothing about the science of telegraphy and how it worked. He followed his usual custom of asking all manner of questions but seldom got much satisfaction. One day an old man gave him this explanation of the telegraph. He said: “Suppose you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London. Well, then, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. The telegraph is like that.”