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92 13 The New Garret There had been a garret over our Fayette Street house, but I had made no manner of use of it. Our Onondaga Street garret was for a while neglected but its day of usefulness came to it very soon. I was beginning, while at Hoyt’s school, to take a deep interest in chemistry and that soon led on into a series of practical experiments in acids, gasses, combinations, and electricities, in which I took more delight than I can tell. While I was in Homer, my cousin, Osborn Bright, had constructed a pretty good electric machine which would give shocks and even charge a Leyden jar, to torment the ignorant with. I did not now go as far as that but I made loads of hydrogen gas to create explosions and lift paper balloons. It was somewhere about this time that a man by the name of Morse accomplished a kind of miracle. He actually invented a machine by means of which a fellow might write a letter in the town to which he sent it instead of putting it upon paper in his own place in the old way. I had no idea how much of my future life was to be related to telegraphic enterprises, but I went to see the first Morse telegraphic instrument that was set up in Syracuse and thought it a wonderful affair. Everybody said that Mr. Morse would make millions out of it; and perhaps he did, but, many a long year afterwards, sitting with him in his study, he intimated with a sufficient clearness, that he had made much less than the public gave him credit for and that he had subsequently lost much of what he did make in unprofitable enterprises. I was sorry to hear it and told him so.1 If in this manner I was learning something about chemistry , in another I was obtaining ideas concerning journalism. I determined to print a periodical of my own. The first requisite, in my opinion, was a 93 the new garret printing press, and I made one, taking the copperplate press in the engraving shop as my model, because it appeared to be easiest of construction. With a great deal of toil and with a rolling pin for a roller, I set up my press. Then I went for type and obtained a lot of second-hand stuff at the Standard office, where the foreman was jocularly disposed to encourage me. It was a long, hard job to set up the first and only number of The Gem, but I succeeded in doing so and acquired my first knowledge of the noble art of typesetting. A number of copies were laboriously struck off and there the matter rested for I had learned my lesson and had no more time or enthusiasm to waste in that direction. It was better to allow the other journals to go on without competition. Possibly the next occupants of the garret may have wondered what on earth that queer machine was made for. They did not find many relics of my laboratory, for I used Florence flasks for retorts and they would break. As to glass in any shape, however, I already knew something. Among the odd character citizens of Syracuse at the time of my arrival had been an old Englishman who made thermometers. He and his fat wife took a fancy to me because of my intense interest in his continual experiments with glassblowing. He could spin glass into fine down and do a great many other wonderful things and I liked to come and watch him doing it and carry home specimens for my collection of rarities. The garret was less frequently a workshop after I became settled in the book-ink-ragspaper hangings-insurance-stationery and Express business. There were still occasional games with the Park boys and now and then the Rambler’s Club would make an adventurous excursion, but my strongest alliance with my old friends grew out of music and social rivalries. On the demise of the Allen and Stebbins Academy, as I have said, Professor Allen went altogether into music. One of his grandest musical ideas was the formation of a perpetual class in vocal music and it became a success. I attended those classes, somewhat irregularly, although I had but little genuine musical genius. I preferred to hear it rather than to make it, but there was one...

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