You can't-----"
"Maybe if you knew how to use your fists, you wouldn't talk that way;
eh, Gus?" queried Ted.
"Well, I don't know but I think Bill is right. It's nice to know how to
scrap if scrapping has to be done, but it shouldn't ever have to be
done,--between nations, anyway." This was a long speech for Gus, but
evidently he meant it.
Bill continued:
"Talking about Edison when he was a boy: he wasn't afraid of work,
either. He got up at about five, got back to supper at nine, or later,
and maybe that wasn't some day! But he made from $12 to $20 a day
profits, for it was Civil War times and everything was high."
"I think I'd work pretty hard for that much," said Gus.
"I reckon," remarked Ted, "that he had a pretty good reason to say that
successful genius is one per cent. inspiration and ninety-nine per cent.
perspiration."
"But I guess that's only partly right and partly modesty," declared
Bill. "There must have been a whole lot more than fifty per cent,
inspiration at work to do what he has done. But he is too busy to go
around blowing his own horn, even from a talking-machine record."
"He doesn't need to do any blowing when you're around," Ted offered.
Bill laughed outright at that and there seemed nothing further to be
said. The girls decided to go on, Ted walked up the street with them,
and Gus and his lame companion turned in the opposite direction toward
the less opulent section of the town.
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