"I was!" announced Cora, gleefully. "Terry just can't see any good in
Edison at all. He says he hires people who really make his inventions
and he gets the credit for them. He says--"

"I don't suppose it makes much difference what he says; he simply
doesn't know what he's talk--"

"You think you know, but do you? You've read a lot of gush that--" Terry
began, but Gus interrupted him, almost a new thing for the quiet chap.

"Listen, Terry: get right on this. Don't let a lot of foolish people
influence you; people who can't ever see any real good in success and
who blame everything on luck and crookedness. And Bill does know."

"Anybody who tries to make Edison out a small potato," declared Bill,
addressing the others, rather than the supercilious youth who had
maligned his hero, "is simply ignorant of the facts. My father knew a
man well who worked for Edison in his laboratory for years. He said that
the stories about Edison making use of the inventions of others is all
nonsense; it is Edison who has the ideas and who starts his assistants
to experimenting, some at one thing, some at another, so as to find out
whether the ideas are good.

"He said that the yarns they tell about Edison's working straight ahead
for hours and hours without food and sleep, then throwing himself on a
couch for a short nap and getting up to go at it again are all exactly
true, over and over again. He said that one of the boys in the shop
tried to play a trick on the old man, as they call him, while he was
napping on the couch. They rigged up a talking-machine on a stand and