164 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS Milan. The Edison family therefore moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when Thomas was abont seven years of age. The young lad did not enjoy an opportunity of acquiring an educar tion, although he is very lavish in his praises of his mother and of her influence. He says : ^^I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber I should have probably turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. I remember I used never to be able to get along at schooL I don 't know what it was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that the teachers never sympathized with me and that my father thought that I was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never misunder- stood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me ; and I felt that I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint. The memory of her will always be a blessing to me. ' ' With the exception of about three months at the Port Huron Public school, young Edison received all his instruction from his mother. While living at Port Huron, the boy's father built an ob- servatory on his house, making a small charge to strangers who desired to look through the telescope. Young Al, as Mr. Edison was called when a boy, loved to sweep the horizon with his father 's telescope. This was his first acquaintance with a scientific instrument. At the age of nine he had read a num- ber of scientific works, as well as Hume 's History of England and Gibbon 's Rome. At the early age of twelve, Edison, in order to obtain pocket money to experiment in chemistry and physics, became a train newsboy on the Detroit and Port Huron branch of the Grand Trunk Eailway. While occupying this position he continued his experimenting on the train and also bought a small hand press and became the editor, printer and publisher of a little newspaper which he called The Weekly Heraldj and the sub- scription price of which was eight cents per month. He was only about fourteen at the time this paper appeared. It con- sisted of a single sheet printed on both sides. The regular
