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.' He dislikes notoriety, thinking that a man is to be 'measured by what he does, not by what is said about him.' But he likes to talk about his inventions and show them to visitors at Menlo Park. In disposition he is sociable, affectionate, and generous, giving himself no airs, and treating all alike. His humour is native, and peculiar to himself, so there is some excuse for the newspaper reporters who take his jokes about the capabilities of Nature au sérieux, and publish them for gospel.
His assistants are selected for their skill and physical endurance. The chief at Menlo Park was Mr. Charles Batchelor, a Scotchman, who had a certain interest in the inventions, but the others,
