access to Detroit and its large stores, where he bought his supplies,
and to the public library, where he could quench his thirst for
technical information, Edison gave up all his spare time and money to
chemistry. Surely the country could have presented at that moment no
more striking example of the passionate pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties than this newsboy, barely fourteen years of age, with his
jars and test-tubes installed on a railway baggage-car.

Nor did this amazing equipment stop at batteries and bottles. The same
little space a few feet square was soon converted by this precocious
youth into a newspaper office. The outbreak of the Civil War gave a
great stimulus to the demand for all newspapers, noticing which he
became ambitious to publish a local journal of his own, devoted to the
news of that section of the Grand Trunk road. A small printing-press
that had been used for hotel bills of fare was picked up in Detroit,
and type was also bought, some of it being placed on the train so that
composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one so mechanical in
his tastes as Edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the
printing art, and thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which
he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. Only one
or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance
can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The thing was
indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less
than fifteen years old. The literary style is good, there are only a few
trivial slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what would be
interesting news and gossip. The price was three cents a copy, or eight
cents a month for regular subscribers, and the circulation ran up to
over four hundred copies an issue. This was by no means the result of
mere public curiosity, but attested the value of the sheet as a genuine
newspaper, to which many persons in the railroad service along the