the ignorant along the Hudson fell on their knees and prayed to be delivered from the monster.

Cyrus McCormick, a Virginian, in 1831 produced a machine that successfully cut grain. The following year he demonstrated it to a gathering of harvesters who were not too eager to see a mechanical device enter into competition with their labor. So skeptical were the farmers that it was several years before a reaper was sold. During the panic of 1837 McCormick surrendered his farm and other property to his creditors but none of them was interested in the crude reaper sufficiently to consider it worth taking. Faith had its reward. In 1840, a stranger rode up to his workshop and bought his first reaper for $50. A little later other farmers invested and he had the satisfaction of knowing that in the harvest of 1840, three of his reapers were used. By 1844, he had sold fifty machines. His log workshop had become a busy factory. Necessary materials were not to be obtained in Virginia for his growing business, so in 1847 he established himself in Chicago where his great industry has grown to tremendous proportions.

Samuel F. B. Morse filed his application for a patent on his invention of the telegraph in 1837 and, failing to secure from Congress an appropriation for an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore, went to Europe seeking aid. The governments there refused funds or patents. Upon his return home, he began a heroic struggle for recognition. Finally, after repeated disappointments, on the last night of the session of the Twenty-seventh Congress, March 3, 1843, by a vote of 90 to 82, $30,000 was appropriated to construct a trial line between Washington and Baltimore.

During the years from 1830 to 1840, Charles Goodyear was frequently imprisoned for debt. The use of rubber during this time was attracting general attention and he became interested in finding a way to increase its utility. Much of his experimentation was carried on in prison, and he became the butt of those who did not share his faith in the ultimate success of his experiments. Early in 1859, Goodyear found that rubber coated with sulphur and then heated was rendered uniformly elastic in all temperatures. He had solved the problem, but it was fully two years before he could convince anyone of that fact.

Finally, William Rider furnished capital for carrying on the process of manufacturing rubber goods. Goodyear's friends considered him a monomaniac. He even dressed in rubber clothes in order to test them. Upon being asked how Mr. Goodyear might be recognized, a friend replied: "If you see a man with an India rubber coat on, India rubber shoes and India rubber cap, and in his pocket an India rubber purse without a cent in it, that is Goodyear." [Laughter.]

The hope of relieving his extreme poverty set Elias Howe to work in 1843 upon the invention of the sewing machine, and he fared as had Mr. Goodyear.

Alexander Graham Bell brought forth the first instrument that would transmit spoken words. Although his invention became an object of interest at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, business men could see little future for its development for practical purposes. They admitted that it was very ingenious but declared that it could be only a toy. It remained for our honored guest of the evening to demonstrate the use that could be made of an electrical toy in order to smooth the pathway of humanity.

Born in circumstances as humble as any of the great inventors who preceded him, his youth was beset with trials and obstacles; and his early manhood was equally as strenuous in effort and enterprise, yet he succeeded in surmounting his difficulties and rising to the pinnacles of his chosen field of endeavor.

We are reminded of his great capacity for details (and that has been defined as the essence of genius); we have learned of his deep reverence for accuracy and carefulness, yet had it not been for a slight deviation from that straight path we might not have heard of Thomas Alva Edison, for my information is, that when in his early days, he was engaged in the sale of newspapers on one of the Western railroads, he began experimenting in the baggage cars, and there rigged up a sort of a temporary laboratory; and upon one occasion he spilled a quantity of acid which set fire to one of the cars. In consequence of this the boy lost his position, but within a day or two thereafter he was instrumental in saving the life of a child of the station master, and so grateful was the father of

that youngster that he undertook to teach him the science of telegraphy. So it was that Mr. Edison became a telegrapher, which started him upon his journey of accomplishment. One of the great things that he did with the knowledge thus gained was to invent and give to humanity that notable achievement of sending four messages at one time upon one wire, which he afterward extended to six; and not alone was he active in the improvement of the telegraph, but his invention of the carbon transmitter was one of the great factors in the development of the telephone.

How fortunate it was for the commercial world that Edison had acid to spill, for it was not long before he had set his sun in the firmament to light the world, and if other men had been hounded nigh to death for merely one discovery, how would our esteemed guest have fared in those days with his more than one thousand inventions?

Can anyone forget his impressions on first hearing the talking machine? Do you remember how you felt like uttering the old farmer's soliloquy when he first saw a giraffe, "There ain't no such animal"? Why, it was witchery, more heinous than ever condemned a poor old crone in Salem. The machine that gives voice even to those who speak no more!

And the motion picture! Registering forever the actions, the gestures, the live features of the great men of this day so that future generations need never again depend upon the pictures painted by the facile pens of gifted artists, but may see for themselves the things and men that were.

And paradoxical as it seems, we can see in action in public those who may then be sleeping soundly in their downy beds.

And if Hargreaves, Stephenson, Arkwright and their brother inventors were among the outstanding figures of their day, how shall we classify Mr. Edison, who, applying his discoveries of the dynamo and the electric light to these inventions, has given them a capacity and an efficiency that would have compelled even these geniuses to gasp with wonder?

His invention of the storage battery has not only produced motive power for vehicles but has also brought the art of refrigeration nearer perfection. Thus in the study of Mr. Edison's life one is impelled to reach the conclusion that he

must be numbered among the world's greatest benefactors to humanity.

Is it reasonable to suppose that without the discovery of the incandescent lamp there would be such an instrument as the X-ray that makes possible to-day cures that a few years ago would rank as miracles?

And so it goes through the whole realm of mechanical power; the gifted mind of Edison has supplemented the slower generating power of steam, by the instantly responsive and dynamic force of electricity.

Even as Moses with his rod struck the rock and the waters gushed forth, so Edison struck an electric current and turned night into day. In fact, in this regard, Mr. Edison, by the abolition of darkness, is the father of real daylight saving. [Applause.]

Although Columbus discovered America, Edison bettered him by making an empire out of a single municipality of America; I refer to the great City of New York.

We have all grown so used to what we have that it takes an occasion such as this to make us understand our great good fortune over that of our fathers.

The electric light and the electric train made New York's subway possible.

Who can remember without a shudder New York's puffing, snorting, noisy steam engines on our elevated roads?

The discovery of the electric dynamo made possible those huge office buildings of which New York is so proud.

Can anyone picture a Coney Island Mardi Gras by gas light? And what would Broadway be without its white light district? So the people of New York, both in their hours of work and in their hours of play realize that Mr. Edison has in very truth made easier and more agreeable their path of life. And therefore, as Acting Mayor of this great municipality, I know that in extending congratulations to Mr. Edison, I am giving voice to the sentiments of our six millions of people and their feelings of appreciation and gratitude for his great work for humanity, and I take great pleasure in presenting you, Mr. Edison, with this gold key which carries with it the Freedom of the Greatest City on Earth. [Applause.]

F. CHARLES HUME, JR.

TO YOUNG LAWYERS

Mr. F. Charles Hume, Jr., a prominent lawyer of Houston, Texas, died in January, 1926. The following speech was given at the dinner of the American Bar Association in Minneapolis, August 31, 1906.

MR. TOASTMASTER, LADIES, FELLOW PRACTITIONERS, AND YOUNG LAWYERS-I feel that I need no introduction to the lawyers of America. In this distinguished company I feel assured that I do not speak in a stranger's voice-but in my own. For many years my name has been a household word-among the members of my own family. Whether the premonitory rumbles of coming greatness have preceded me here, I know not. In my own state I am not known solely as a lawyer. My fame is also titular: I am called "judge" by the obsequious office boy, and by the janitor-"where thrift may follow fawning." But my preeminence rests on no firmer foundation than authorship of a work upon an important legal subject. And in justice to myself and my state I must say that I owe my juristic rank, and such name and fame as I bear, to my "domestic relations."

It would be superfluous for me to say that this is the happiest moment of my life, because it is not. After-dinner speaking is an effort to appear at ease and happy, though fearful and tumultuous. It is, indeed, an unusual accomplishment. It is the pâté-de-foie-gras of oratory-a conditional rather than a normal mode of expression. The archetype of the art is the impromptu speech. It is often an unplumed squab for flight, and heavy with "the stuff that dreams are made of"-the art that's long when time is fleeing. It attains its perfection ex post facto, or retroactively; that is, after the banquet hall's deserted, and the speaker is homeward bound alone. How preg