stockings, and even at the age of sixty-four he was known to outjump 260 soldiers of a regiment quartered at Fort Gratiot, in Michigan. His wife was a fine-looking woman, intelligent, well-educated, and a social favourite. The inventor probably draws his physical endurance from his father, and his intellect from his mother.
Milan is situated on the Huron River, about ten miles from the lake, and was then a rising town of 3,000 inhabitants, mostly occupied with the grain and timber trade. Mr. Edison dwelt in a plain cottage with a low fence in front, which stood beside the roadway under the shade of one or two trees.
The child was neither pale nor prematurely thoughtful; he was rosy-cheeked, laughing, and chubby. He liked to ramble in the woods, or play on the banks of the river, and could repeat the songs of the boatmen ere he was five years old. Still he was fond of building little roads with planks, and scooping out canals or caverns in the sand.
An amusing anecdote is imputed to his sister, Mrs. Homer Page, of Milan. Having been told one day that a goose hatches her goslings by the warmth of her body, the child was missed, and subsequently found in the barn curled up in a nest beside a quantity of eggs!
The Lake Shore Railway having injured the trade of Milan, the family removed to Port Huron, in Michigan, when Edison was about seven years old. Here they lived in an old-fashioned white frame-house, surrounded by a grove, and commanding a fine view of the broad river, with the Canadian hills beyond. His mother undertook his education, and with the exception of two months he never went to school. She directed his opening mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and often read aloud to the family in the
