“The old geezer looks like ‘His Master’s Voice,’ don’t he?” came like a sneer from the background.

During the pandemonium, the voice in the trumpet was proceeding quite unperturbed.

“Silence!” shouted Bill, looking severely in the direction of the “seat of the scornful.”  “All please listen in on this.  Mr. Meadowcroft is speaking.”  The confusion subsided and they heard these words: 

“—­sometimes impossible to get Mr. Edison’s attention for weeks at a time.  He has his meals brought in and sleeps in the laboratory—­when he sleeps at all—­and so intense is his interest in his work that it is useless to attempt to disturb him even for what seems to me to be business of the highest importance.

“But he has permitted me to express his deep and sincere interest in all you young people, and I am adding, on my own responsibility, three expressions of his which now seem to have maximum force because he has used them: 

“‘Never mind the milk that’s spilt.’

“Genius is one per cent. inspiration, and ninety-nine per cent. perspiration.’

“‘Don’t watch—­don’t clock the watch—­oh!—­don’t watch the CLOCK!—­’ Why, Mr. Edison, I thought you—­I have just been explaining why you couldn’t come—­and now (with a laugh) here you are!

“There was a hearty chuckle and another voice said: 

“I know it’s mean to make you a victim of misplaced confidence, but it came across me like a flash that I couldn’t do a better thing for the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts and all the ‘good scouts,’ old and young, than to broadcast a good word for my friend Marconi.  So I have run up here to speak to the Radio Boys after all.  I know it’s a shame, but—­”

“Nothing of the sort, Mr. Edison,—­not on your life!” (It is the more familiar voice of Mr. Meadowcroft now.)

“Wait, let me introduce you:  Boys and girls, you are now ‘listening in’ with Thomas Alva Edison, who said, like the young man in the parable, ’I go not,’ then he changed his mind and went.  He is here—­not to give you any message for or about himself, but to express his regard for the man to whom all Radio Boys and Girls owe so much.  Mr. Edison has come on purpose to say a word to you.”

When the room was in a silence so solemn that those present could hear their own hearts beat, the voice the company now recognized as Mr. Edison’s came through with trumpet clearness: 

“I have great admiration and high regard for Marconi, the pioneer inventor of wireless communication.  I wish you all the happiness that Comes through usefulness.  Good night.”

“Mr. Edison—­one moment!  In the name of the millions who are not ‘listening in’ on this, won’t you please write this sentiment so that it can be seen as well as heard?”

“All right”—­came through in Edison’s voice.  A brief pause ensued and—­“Thank you, Mr. Edison,” from Mr. Meadowcroft in a low tone, which he immediately raised: