Visitors to the laboratory often found him in his
shirt-sleeves, with dishevelled hair and grimy hands.
The writer of 'A Night with Edison' has described him as bending like a
wizard over the smoky fumes of some lurid lamps arranged on a brick
furnace, as if he were summoning the powers of darkness.
'It is much after midnight now,' says this author. 'The machinery below
has ceased to rumble, and the tired hands have gone to their homes. A
hasty lunch has been sent up. We are at the thermoscope. Suddenly a
telegraph instrument begins to click. The inventor strikes a grotesque
attitude, a herring in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and with a
voice a little muffled with a mouthful of both, translates aloud,
slowly, the sound intelligible to him alone: "London.--News of death of
Lord John Russell premature." "John Blanchard, whose failure was
announced yesterday, has suicided (no, that was a bad one) SUCCEEDED! in
adjusting his affairs, and will continue in business."'
His tastes are simple and his habits are plain. On one occasion, when
invited to a dinner at Delmonico's restaurant, he contented himself with
a slice of pie and a cup of tea. Another time he is said to have
declined a public dinner with the remark that 100,000 dollars would not
tempt him to sit through two hours of 'personal glorification.
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