“Yes,” said Janey and in another minute she had taken out her pad and paper and taken off her hat and coat and was sitting at the end of the shinydark mahogany table in front of the crackling fire, and the firelight glinted on silver decanters and hotwater pitchers and teapots and on the black perfectly shined shoes and in the flameblue eyes of J. Ward Moorehouse.
There she was sitting taking dictation from J. Ward Moorehouse.
At the end of the afternoon the sleekhaired man came in and said, “Time to dress for dinner, sir,” and J. Ward Moorehouse grunted and said, “Hell.” The sleekhaired man skated a little nearer across the thick carpet. “Beg pardon, sir; Miss Rosenthal’s fallen down and broken ’er ’ip. Fell on the ice in front of the Treasury Buildin’, sir.”
“The hell she has… Excuse me, Miss Williams,” he said and smiled. Janey looked up at him indulgent-understandingly and smiled too. “Has she been fixed up all right?”
“Mr. Mulligan took her to the orspital, sir.”
“That’s right… You go downstairs, Morton, and send her some flowers. Pick out nice ones.”
“Yessir… About five dollars’ worth, sir?”
“Two fifty’s the limit, Morton, and put my card in.”
Morton disappeared. J. Ward Moorehouse walked up and down in front of the fireplace for a while as if he were going to dictate. Janey’s poised pencil hovered above the pad. J. Ward Moorehouse stopped walking up and down and looked at Janey. “Do you know anyone, Miss Williams… I want a nice smart girl as stenographer and secretary, someone I can repose confidence in… Damn that woman for breaking her hip.”
Janey’s head swam. “Well, I’m looking for a position of that sort myself.”
J. Ward Moorehouse was still looking at her with a quizzical blue stare. “Do you mind telling me, Miss Williams, why you lost your last job?”
“Not at all. I left Dreyfus and Carroll, perhaps you know them… I didn’t like what was going on round there. It would have been different if old Mr. Carroll had stayed, though Mr. Dreyfus was very kind, I’m sure.”
“He’s an agent of the German government.”
“That’s what I mean. I didn’t like to stay after the President’s proclamation.”
“Well, round here we’re all for the Allies, so it’ll be quite all right. I think you’re just the person I like… Of course, can’t be sure, but all my best decisions are made in a hurry. How about twentyfive a week to begin on?”
“All right, Mr. Moorehouse; it’s going to be very interesting work, I’m sure.”
“Tomorrow at nine please, and send these telegrams from me as you go out:
“Mrs. J. Ward Moorehouse
“Great Neck Long Island New York
“May have to go Mexico City explain Saltworths unable attend dinner Hope everything allright love to all Ward
“Miss Eleanor Stoddard
“45 E 11th Street New York
“Write me what you want brought back from Mexico as ever J.W.
“Do you mind traveling, Miss Williams?”
“I’ve never traveled, but I’m sure I’d like it.”
“I may have to take a small office force down with me… oil business. Let you know in a day or two…
“James Frunze c/o J. Ward Moorehouse
“100 Fifth Avenue New York
“Advise me immediately shoreham development situation A and B Barrow restless release statement on unity of interest americanism versus foreign socialistic rubbish. JWM…
“Thank you; that’ll be all today. When you’ve typed those out and sent the wires you may go.”
J. Ward Moorehouse went through a door in the back, taking his coat off as he went. When Janey had typed the articles and was slipping out of the hotel lobby to send the wires at the Western Union she caught a glimpse of him in a dress suit with a gray felt hat on and a buffcolored overcoat over his arm. He was hurrying into a taxi and didn’t see her. It was very late when she went home. Her cheeks were flushed but she didn’t feel tired. Alice was sitting up reading on the edge of the bed. “Oh, I was so worried…” she began, but Janey threw her arms round her and told her she had a job as private secretary to J. Ward Moorehouse and that she was going to Mexico. Alice burst out crying, but Janey was feeling so happy she couldn’t stop to notice it but went on to tell her everything about the afternoon at the Shoreham.
The Electrical Wizard
Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, in eighteen fortyseven;
Milan was a little town on the Huron River that for a while was the wheatshipping port for the whole Western Reserve; the railroads took away the carrying trade, the Edison family went up to Port Huron in Michigan to grow up with the country;
his father was a shinglemaker who puttered round with various small speculations; he dealt in grain and feed and lumber and built a wooden tower a hundred feet high; tourists and excursionists paid a quarter each to go up the tower and look at the view over Lake Huron and the St. Clair River and Sam Edison became a solid and respected citizen of Port Huron.
Thomas Edison only went to school for three months because the teacher thought he wasn’t right bright. His mother taught him what she knew at home and read eighteenth century writers with him, Gibbon and Hume and Newton, and let him rig up a laboratory in the cellar.
Whenever he read about anything he went down cellar and tried it out.
When he was twelve he needed money to buy books and chemicals; he got a concession as newsbutcher on the daily train from Detroit to Port Huron. In Detroit there was a public library and he read it.
He rigged up a laboratory on the train and whenever he read about anything he tried it out. He rigged up a printing press and printed a paper called The Herald, when the Civil War broke out he organized a newsservice and cashed in on the big battles. Then he dropped a stick of phosphorus and set the car on fire and was thrown off the train.
By that time he had considerable fame in the country as the boy editor of the first newspaper to be published on a moving train. The London Times wrote him up.
He learned telegraphy and got a job as night operator at Stratford Junction in Canada, but one day he let a freighttrain get past a switch and had to move on.
(During the Civil War a man that knew telegraphy could get a job anywhere.)
Edison traveled round the country taking jobs and dropping them and moving on, reading all the books he could lay his hands on, whenever he read about a scientific experiment he tried it out, whenever he could get near an engine he’d tinker with it, whenever they left him alone in a telegraph office he’d do tricks with the wires. That often lost him the job and he had to move on.
He was tramp operator through the whole Middle West: Detroit, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, New Orleans, always broke, his clothes stained with chemicals, always trying tricks with the telegraph.
He worked for the Western Union in Boston.
In Boston he doped out the model of his first patent, an automatic voterecorder for use in Congress, but they didn’t want an automatic voterecorder in Congress, so Edison had the trip to Washington and made some debts and that was all he got out of that; he worked out a stockticker and burglar alarms and burned all the skin off his face with nitric acid.
But New York was already the big market for stocks and ideas and gold and greenbacks.
(This part is written by Horatio Alger:)
When Edison got to New York he was stony broke and had debts in Boston and Rochester. This was when gold was at a premium and Jay Gould was trying to corner the gold market. Wall Street was crazy. A man named Law had rigged up an electric indicator (Callahan’s invention) that indicated the price of gold in brokers’ offices. Edison, looking for a job, broke and with no place to go, had been hanging round the central office passing the time of day with the operators when the general transmitter stopped with a crash in the middle of a rush day of nervous trading; everybody in the office lost his head. Edison stepped up and fixed the machine and landed a job at $300 a month.