the line, and an immense amount of blackberries in the season. I bought
wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the engineers
and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. After a while there
was a daily immigrant train put on. This train generally had from seven
to ten coaches filled always with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and
Minnesota. On these trains I employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and
stick candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper sales became very
profitable, and I gave up the vegetable store."

The hours of this occupation were long, but the work was not
particularly heavy, and Edison soon found opportunity for his favorite
avocation--chemical experimentation. His train left Port Huron at 7
A.M., and made its southward trip to Detroit in about three hours. This
gave a stay in that city from 10 A.M. until the late afternoon, when the
train left, arriving at Port Huron about 9.30 P.M. The train was made up
of three coaches--baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger or "ladies."
The baggage-car was divided into three compartments--one for trunks and
packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking. In those days no use
was made of the smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation, and it
was turned over to young Edison, who not only kept papers there and his
stock of goods as a "candy butcher," but soon had it equipped with an
extraordinary variety of apparatus. There was plenty of leisure on the
two daily runs, even for an industrious boy, and thus he found time
to transfer his laboratory from the cellar and re-establish it on the
train.

His earnings were also excellent--so good, in fact, that eight or ten
dollars a day were often taken in, and one dollar went every day to his
mother. Thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other
profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. And spent it was, for with