One very elegant clock had a solid block of wood where the works should have been, but the face and golden hands were all complete.

However, one clock was running, with a tick needlessly loud, but this clock had no hands.

The Edison Library is a gigantic affair, with two balconies and bookstacks limitless.

The intent was to have a scientific library right at hand that would compass the knowledge of the world.  The Laboratory is quite as complete, for in it is every chemical substance known to man, all labeled, classified and indexed.  Seemingly, Edison is the most careless, indifferent and slipshod of men, but the real fact is that such a thorough business general the world has seldom seen.  If he wants, say, the “Electrical Review” for March, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-One, he hands a boy a slip of paper and the book is in his hands in five minutes.  Edison of all men understands that knowledge consists in having a clerk who can quickly find the thing.  In his hands the card-index has reached perfection.

Edison has no private office, and his desk in the great library has not had a letter written on it since Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five.  “I hate to disturb the mice,” he said as he pointed it out indifferently.

He arrives at the stockade early—­often by seven o’clock, and makes his way direct to the Laboratory, which stands in the center of the campus.  All around are high factory buildings, vibrating with the suppressed roar and hum of industry.

In the Laboratory, Edison works, secure and free from interruption unless he invites it.  Much of his time is spent in the Chemical Building, a low, one-story structure, lighted from the top.  It has a cement floor and very simple furniture, the shelves and tables being mostly of iron.  “We are always prepared for fires and explosions here,” said Edison in half-apology for the barrenness of the rooms.

The place is a maze of retorts, kettles, tubes, siphons and tiny brass machinery.  In the midst of the mess stood two old-fashioned armchairs—­both sacred to Edison.  One he sits in, and the other is for his feet, his books, pads and paper.

Here he sits and thinks, reads or muses or tells stories or shuffles about with his hands in his pockets.  Edison is a man of infinite leisure.  He has the faculty of throwing details upon others.  At his elbow, shod in sneakers silent, is always a stenographer.  Then there is a bookkeeper who does nothing but record the result of every experiment, and these experiments are going on constantly, attended to by half a dozen quiet and alert men, who work like automatons.  “I have tried a million schemes that will not work—­I know everything that is no good.  I work by elimination,” says Edison.

When hot on the trail of an idea he may work here for three days and nights without going home, and his wife is good enough and great enough to leave him absolutely to himself.  In a little room in the corner of the Laboratory is a little iron cot and three gray army blankets.  He can sleep at any time, and half an hour’s rest will enable him to go on.  When he can’t quite catch the idea, he closes up his brain-cells for ten minutes and sleeps, then up and after it again.