What with his business as newsboy, his publication of the _Weekly Herald_, his reading and chemical and electrical experiments, Edison was leading a busy life and making rapid progress, but unexpectedly there came disaster, which brought about a sudden change. One day, as the train was running swiftly over a piece of poorly laid track, there was a sudden lurch, and a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf, fell to the floor and burst into flame.
The car took fire, and Edison was trying in vain to put out the blaze when the conductor rushed in with water and saved the car. On arriving at the next station the enraged conductor put the boy off with his entire outfit, including his laboratory and printing-plant.
The origin of Edison's deafness may be told in his own words: "My train was standing by the platform at Smith's Creek station. I was trying to climb into the freight car with both arms full of papers when the conductor took me by the ears and lifted me. I felt something snap inside my head, and my deafness started from that time and has ever since progressed."
"This deafness has been a great advantage to me in various ways. When in a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and, unlike the other operators, I was not bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve the transmitter so that I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked over one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word "specie" perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done I knew that everything else could be done--which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing."
But we left young Edison on the station platform, sorrowful and indignant, as the train moved off, deserting him in the midst of his beloved possessions. He was saddened, but not altogether discouraged, and after some trouble succeeded in making his way home, where he again set up his laboratory and also his printing-office. There was some objection on the part of the family, as they feared that they might also suffer from fire, but he promised not to bring in anything of a dangerous nature.