“’She consented and I went down and found an assistant working on the job.  We both monkeyed with the machines an hour or two before we got them to rights.  Then I went home.

“’My wife and I laughed at the story at first, but when we came across it about every other week, it began to get rather stale.  It was one of those canards that stick, and I shall be spoken of always as the man who forgot his wife within an hour after he was married.’

“A similar yarn was told of Abraham Lincoln, which was equally false, but even more generally believed.

“Out of a multitude of labor savers and world-beaters—­and world savers, too!—­to be credited to Mr. Edison, it is impossible to mention more than these: 

“The quadruplex telegraph system for sending four messages—­two in each direction—­at the same time; the telephone carbon transmitter; the phonograph; the incandescent electric light and complete system; magnetic separator; Edison Effect now used in Radio bulbs; giant rock crushers; alkaline storage battery; motion picture camera.  These are but few of Edison’s inventions, but they are giving employment to over a million people and making the highest use of billions of dollars.

“With Mr. Edison’s modesty it is difficult to get him to talk of the relative importance of his inventions, but he has expressed the opinion that the one of most far-reaching importance is the electric light system which includes the generation, regulation, distribution and measurement of electric current for light, heat and power.  The invention he loves most is the phonograph as he is a lover of music.  He has patented about twelve hundred inventions.

“Recent developments are proving that the moving picture, because of its educational and emotional appeal is the greatest of them all.  It is estimated that more than one hundred millions of people go to one of these shows once every seven days, which is equivalent to every man, woman and child in the United States of America going to a movie once a week.  The motion picture reaches, teaches and preaches to more people in America than all the schools, churches, books, magazines and newspapers put together, and when it teaches, it does it in a vivid way that live people like.

“Political campaigns are beginning to be carried on with the silver screen for a platform.  Writers in great magazines are proving, on the authority of the Japanese themselves, that the American moving picture is re-making Japan.  Another, who has studied the signs of the times, asserts that the only way to bring order out of chaos in Russia is by means of the motion picture.

“Comparisons are of times odious, but not in this case, for there is no man living, nor has there ever lived a man, except the Great Teacher, who has more greatly and generally benefited humanity or cast a stronger light upon the processes of civilization than Thomas Alva Edison.”

At the close of another musical number there was a general expectation of dismissal, a shuffling of feet and a murmur of voices.  This was checked suddenly by Bill.  The boy had been near the receiver all the while, on the chance of being needed in case of mishap, or for a sharper “tuning in”; now he got what the others did not and rising he let out a yell: