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Show Edison's First Big Check. "When I came to New York to sell my first invention," Mr. Edison said, "I was largely in doubt as to its value. I knew it was a useful contrivance, but it was with some diffident that I entered en-tered the presence of the manufacturer with whom I opened negotiations for its disposal. As a boy, I had often longed to possess $5,000. and I had a good mind to hold out for that much money, though I felt secretly that I would be doing well to get $2,00Q. So, when the manufacturer asked me how much I wanted for the patent rights I stammered and asked how much he wss willing to pay. " 'Come around in the morning,' he said, anJ I went home to dream about that J5.000 fortune I was going to get perhaps. When I saw him in the morning he said, with a take-that-or- take-nothing air of determination, we have decided to pay you $40,000 not a cent more'' ' "I almost fainted; but in less than five minutes I had stuck my name to a contract and was out in the street looking in a half-dazed way at a check In my hand. 'Payable to the order of Thomas A. Edison, forty thousand dollars dol-lars ($40,000). Then I began to think and the forty thousand seeme like forty millions, and I said to myself, 'Tom, you've been swindled; the check is no good." And when I went to the bank I had never been inside of one to do business and . presented the I check. I was not surprised when the teller scrutinized it. glanced at me and j pushed It back with a shake of the i head and a remark that I was too excited ex-cited to understand, but concluded that my fears were confirmed. So I stuffed it in my pocket and went to see a friend, to whom I related my experience. experi-ence. " 'Let me see the check,' he said. 'Why, that's all right. You must be identified.' And we went back to the bank. The cashier knew my friend, and the money was soon counted out. Still . I wasn't sure I was awake until I began to feel and hear the snap of the bank notes. It was a big bundle of money, and I stuck some of it in ev-?ry ev-?ry p'vket,- so that -almost anywhere I put my hand I could feel It bulging out. When I went to the hotel that night, ' do you think . I took off my """j '" ""-'" ;' .r clothes? Not much. I slept in them, so I wouldn't wake up and find it was a cruel dream." |