window, and, turning to the colored man, said: 'Nicodemus, pay this
boy.' I told Nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me.
The passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction. I returned
with the illustrated papers and magazines. These were seized and thrown
out of the window, and I was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then
returned with all the old magazines and novels I had not been able to
sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. I was small and
thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all I could possibly
carry. I had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit
again. When I opened the door, all the passengers roared with laughter.
I walked right up to the young men. One asked me what I had. I said
'Magazines and novels.' He promptly threw them out of the window,
and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with cracked hickory nuts, then
pop-corn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. All went out of the
window. I felt like Alexander the Great!--I had no more chance! I had
sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk, which was about
the size of a carpenter's chest, and started to pull this from the
baggage-car to the passenger-car. It was almost too much for my
strength, but at last I got it in front of those men. I pulled off my
coat, shoes, and hat, and laid them on the chest. Then he asked: 'What
have you got, boy?' I said: 'Everything, sir, that I can spare that is
for sale.' The passengers fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me
$27 for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear
of the car. These men were from the South, and I have always retained a
soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman."

While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day
to go to the office of E. B. Ward & Company, at that time the largest
owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest
boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another