Like Ampere, too, he was noted for a
memory which retained many of the facts thus impressed upon it, as the
sounds are printed on a phonogram.
The boy student was also a keen man of business, and his pursuit of
knowledge in the evening did not sap his enterprises of the day. He
soon acquired a virtual monopoly for the sale of newspapers on the line,
and employed four boy assistants. His annual profits amounted to about
500 dollars, which were a substantial aid to his parents. To increase
the sale of his papers, he telegraphed the headings of the war news to
the stations in advance of the trains, and placarded them to tempt the
passengers. Ere long he conceived the plan of publishing a newspaper of
his own. Having bought a quantity of old type at the office of the
DETROIT FREE PRESS, he installed it in a spingless car, or 'caboose' of
the train meant for a smoking-room, but too uninviting to be much used
by the passengers. Here he set the type, and printed a smallsheet about
a foot square by pressing it with his hand. The GRAND TRUNK HERALD, as
he called it, was a weekly organ, price three cents, containing a
variety of local news, and gossip of the line. It was probably the only
journal ever published on a railway train; at all events with a boy for
editor and staff, printer and 'devil,' publisher and hawker.
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