Boy Wanted. Waterman Nixon

      Have labored single-hearted.

      In every season, wet or dry,

      Or fair or stormy weather,

      We’ve joined our hands, myself and I,

      And just worked on together.

      Dr. Arnold, whose long experience with youth at Rugby gave weight to his opinion, declared that “the difference between one boy and another consists not so much in talent as in energy.” “The longer I live,” says Sir Thomas Buxton, another student of human character, “the more certain I am that the great difference between men, between the great and the insignificant, is energy, invincible determination, an honest purpose once fixed, and then death or victory. This quality will do anything in the world; and no talents, no circumstances, will make a two-legged creature a man without it.”

      Says an old Latin proverb: “Opportunity has hair in front, but is bald behind. Seize him by the forelock.”

      When Thomas A. Edison went out into the world to make his way, he had received only two months’ regular schooling, but his mother had early impressed upon his mind the thought that he must atone for his lack of school training by developing a taste for reading. His biographers tell us that the “Penny Encyclopedia” and Ure’s “History of the Sciences” were in his hands at a time when most boys, having become acquainted with stories of adventure, look for mystery in every bush and resolve to become pirates and Indian fighters. There are many stories of his early acuteness. One relates how when a boy of twelve or fourteen he was employed in selling papers on a railroad train in Michigan, and upon receiving advance news of a battle of the Rebellion fought at that time he secured fifteen hundred papers on credit, telegraphed the headlines to the stations along the route, and sold his wares at a premium. It was after this exploit that he conceived the idea of starting a daily paper of his own. Securing some old type from the “Detroit Free Press,” he set up his establishment in a car and began the publication of the “Grand Trunk Herald,” the first newspaper ever published on a train. He also installed in the car a laboratory for making experiments in chemistry, and both his newspaper and his experiments flourished until one unlucky day when he set fire to the car with phosphorus. This was too much for the conductor who promptly threw the young editor and scientist with all his belongings out on the station platform, and in addition boxed his ears so roughly as to cause him to be ever after partly deaf. But misfortune could not dampen his ardor. His lack of schooling was more than atoned for by his grit, ambition and studious habits. With the possession of these qualities and the disposition to make the most of spare moments, this famous physicist, chemist, mechanician, and inventor has done more for himself, and more for humanity and the advancement of civilization than any of the college-bred workers in industrial sciences during the last half-century.