Thomas A. Edison is one of the benefactors of his time. He reached out
into space and grasped a substance that is both invisible and intangible,
harnessed it with trappings, pushed a button, and the world was illumined.
There were years of unremitting toil behind this achievement, years of
discouragement bordering on despair, but years in which the light of hope
was kept burning. We accept his gift with the very acme of nonchalance and
with little or no feeling of gratitude. Perhaps he would not have it
otherwise. We do not know. But certain it is that his marvelous
achievement has made life more agreeable to millions of people and he must
be conscious of this fact. At some time in his life he must have achieved
a sense of responsibility to his fellows and this worthy sentiment must
have become the guiding principle in all his labors. If some teacher
fostered in him this sense of responsibility, she did a piece of work for
the world that can never be measured in terms of salary. She did not teach
arithmetic, or grammar, or geography. She taught Edison. And one of the
big results of her teaching was his attainment of this sense of
responsibility which far overtops all the arithmetic and history that he
ever learned. The man who carried the message to Garcia is another fitting
illustration of this same principle. In executing his commission he
overcame difficulties that would have seemed insurmountable to a less
intrepid man.
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