"The inventor," said Mabel, producing two volumes from under her arm, "is Mr. Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the father of Maria Edgeworth." "What did he invent?" asked many of the company. "He invented the telegraph." "Well, I never knew that before." "I thought Morse invented the telegraph." "Didn't Dr. Franklin invent the telegraph?" "I thought Edison--" Other remarks were also made, showing a certain amount of incredulity. "You mistake," said Bedford, placidly; "you are all of you under a misapprehension. I think that you all of you allude to the electric telegraph,--an invention of a later date than that of Mr. Edgeworth, and one of more value, as far as practical affairs are concerned. No; Mr. Edgeworth invented, or thinks he invented, the telegraph as it was used in the eighteenth century and the early part of the nineteenth, sometimes named the Semaphore. It wasn't a difficult invention, and I don't believe it ever came to any very practical use as constructed by Edgeworth, though French telegraphs were very useful." "What kind of a telegraph was it?" "Well, it was just the kind of a telegraph that the conductor of a railroad train is when he waves his arms to the engineer to go ahead. There's an account of it by Edgeworth in one of these books, with pictures to it." "But my chief interest about Edgeworth," said Mabel, "is in his memoirs, which are written partly by himself and partly by his daughter. They are really very amusing. He was married five times,--once with a door-key when he was only fourteen." This startling intelligence roused even Colonel Ingham to demand particulars. Was he married to all five at once? to all of them when he was only fourteen? "No," admitted Mabel, with some regret; "he was married to them, all at different times, and he was divorced from the one he married at fourteen with the door-key." "They were only married for fun," said Bedford. "It was all a joke. They were at a wedding, and they thought it would be funny after the real marriage to have a mock one. So they did, and married Edgeworth to a girl who was there. It was a real marriage, for they were afterwards divorced." "Well," said Sam Edmeston, "I shall be glad to hear about this gentleman, I'm sure, though I never did hear of him before. But may I ask why it was necessary to introduce him by means of an allusion to 'Frank' and other works which we have few of us ever read, though it is very possible that we may some of us have heard of them?"