ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected
to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The
switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches
square. The brass connections on it were black with age and with the
arcing effects of lightning, which, to young Edison, seemed particularly
partial to Louisville. "It would strike on the wires," he says, "with
an explosion like a cannon-shot, making that office no place for an
operator with heart-disease." Around the dingy walls were a dozen
tables, the ends next to the wall. They were about the size of those
seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash-bowl and
pitcher. The copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard
were small, crystallized, and rotten. The battery-room was filled
with old record-books and message bundles, and one hundred cells of
nitric-acid battery, arranged on a stand in the centre of the room. This
stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive
action of the powerful acid. Grim and uncompromising as the description
reads, it was typical of the equipment in those remote days of the
telegraph at the close of the war.

Illustrative of the length to which telegraphers could go at a time when
they were so much in demand, Edison tells the following story: "When I
took the position there was a great shortage of operators. One night at
2 A.M. another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report,
and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp,
tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown
open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There
appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who
worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when
intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His
eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his