A typical example of this class of intellect is Mr. Thomas A. Edison. It may be doubted if such a man could, in the qualities that make him remarkable, be the product of any other country than ours. In common with nearly all those who have left a deep impression upon our country, Edison was the child of that hackneyed "respectable poverty" which here is a different condition from that existing all over Europe, where the phrase was coined. There, the phrase, and the condition it describes, mean a dull content, an incapacity to rise, a happy indifference to all other conditions, a dullness that does not desire to learn, to change, to think. To respectable poverty in other civilizations there are strong local associations like those of a cat, not arising to the dignity of love of country. In the United States, without a word, without argument or question, a young man becomes a pioneer--not necessarily one of locality or physical newness, but a pioneer in mind--in creed, politics, business--in the boundless domain of hope and endeavor. In America no man is as his father was except in physical traits. No man there is a volunteer soldier fighting his country's battles except from a conviction that he ought to be. A man is an inventor, a politician, a writer, first because he knows that valuable changes are possible, and, second, because he can make such changes profitable to himself. It is the great realm of immutable steadfastness combined with constant change; unique among the nations. Edison never had more than two months regular schooling in his entire boyhood. There is, therefore, nothing trained, "regular," technical, about him. If there had been it is probable that we might never have heard of him. He is one of the innumerable standing arguments against the old system advocated by everybody's father, and especially by the older fathers of the church, and which meant that every man and woman was practically cut by the same pattern, or cast in the same general mould, and was to be fitted for a certain notch by training alone. No more than thirty years ago the note of preparation for the grooves of life was constantly sounded. Natural aptitude, "bent," inclination, were disregarded. The maxim concocted by some envious dull man that "genius is only another name for industry," was constantly quoted and believed.