hall mark of a measure of probability and has been vouched for by some of Edison’s contemporaries, but the yarn that he once affixed to the telegraphic office door a contrivance that made it collide with the nasal organ of a spying superintendent is likely spurious. When working at Fort Gratiot he introduced without fuss or feathers, an improvement in relaying messages across the River at Sarnia which reduced the labor involved by half, evincing in this test an early aversion to ponderous method and high costs, which has characterized his subsequent experiments and helpful discoveries. In his commercial wire practice at Detroit his colleagues of other days remember him as a good press reporter whose handwriting resembled printing more than a string of Spencerian script. They tell how he tied the Gotham wiseacres and would be jokers into knots with his deliberateness and speed, the key and its characters being a part of him, like a Centaur and his horse. His demeanor was at times friendly and discursive, followed by spells of dreamy reflection and profound reticence and he would frequently immerse himself in tinkerings with the sounder and key, adding to and endeavoring to make them different and more amenable to his advanced ideas. The reel with a paper ribbon on which a message from the other end was registered by means of dots and dashes indented thereon, had not then been entirely replaced by the sound system. On February 24th, 1868, Mr. Edison arrived in Toronto en route Boston, and after a brief visit with his former friend John Murray, a well known dispatcher, afterwards some years at Belleville, started eastward. On this date a traffic paralyzing three day storm set in and the “G.T.R.” train was snow stalled, compelling Mr. Edison and several others to return. Expecting improved weather and resumption of train service, he spent considerable time about the old depot and men who met him then state that he was a desultory talker, an inveterate thinker and a chain smoker quite oblivious to the fleeting hours of the night. The late James Stephenson was superintendent at Toronto that winter, Henry Bourlier so long and honorably connected with the Allans, was station agent, W. A. Wilson, erect and active to-day, just recently retired from the “New York Central,” was the Morse Code operator, W. C. Nunn--inventor of a railway signal device in 1856--was agent at Belville and “the admiral,” Mr. Frederick J. Glackmeyer, Ontario Parliamentary Sergeant-at-Arms, December 27th, 1867 (50 years) 1917, had only two months before bid adieu to ticket work in the old station where Thomas Edison purchased his ticket. On February 27th, he again essayed the sixteen hour journey to Montreal, and at Boston in 1870 the Duplex System appeared, enabling two operators to send independent messages over a single wire. Then came his perfection of the Quadruplex, permitting two people at each end to forward and receive telegrams simultaneously.