"Friend Adams goes on to tell of other happennings at the Hub:

"'One day Edison was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of
Faraday's works, bringing them home at 4 A.M. and reading steadily until
breakfast time, when he said, with great enthusiasm:

"'Adams, I have got so much to do and life is so short, _I am going to
hustle_!'"

"'Then he started off to breakfast on a dead run.'

"He soon opened a workshop in Boston and began making experiments. It
was here that he made a working model of his vote recorder, the first
invention he ever patented.

"Edison has told us of this trip to Washington and how he showed that
his invention could register the House vote, pro and con, almost
instantaneously. The chairman of the committee saw how quickly and
perfectly it worked and said to him:

"'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we _don't_ want
down here, it is this. Filibustering on votes is one of the greatest
weapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation, and this
instrument would stop that.'

"The youth felt the force of this so much that he decided from that time
forth not to try to invent anything unless it would meet a genuine
demand,--not from a few, but many people.

"It was while in Boston that Edison grew weary of the monotonous life of