She read with a bit of almost personal pride the item in the Portland paper that told how, on September 4, 1882, at three o'clock in the afternoon, electric light was supplied for the first time to a number of New York customers; and when, in 1884, that same paper stated that at Brockton, Massachusetts, the first theater ever lighted by electricity from a central plant had been thrown open, she wrote her uncle:
"I'm sure you'll have to discharge your lamp trimmer pretty soon. But I don't care now, for with father's help, I think I can enter Wellesley in the fall. Of course I hope to work one more summer for you."
Uncle John answered that letter in person, for he needed to go to Maine to make arrangements for the summer.
"I congratulate you, Dora," said he. "You deserve a college course. But I shan't discharge you yet. I expect now to wire the hotel by 1889; but even if I shouldn't need a lamp trimmer all the time till then, I shall always be glad of a capable waitress.--Will you work for me the next three summers?"
"Of course I will, Uncle John," replied Dora as eagerly and gratefully as she had made the same reply six years before. "With the money I can earn the next three summers, I can lessen college expenses a good deal."
So it happened that the ambition of Dora's girlhood; largely through her own pluck and persistence, was realized in due season. Still, she always felt that Mr. Edison unknowingly had a large share in the making of her career; for when in after years she became an instructor in physics at an influential school, she could easily trace back her love for her subject to her interest in the early experiments upon the electric light.
In March, 1852, Lucy Hobart began a six months' visit with her grandparents who lived just outside Trenton, New Jersey. One morning at the breakfast table, Grandfather Hobart, whom most people called Lawyer Hobart, said to Lucy, "Little girl, a most important case is being tried at the court house this week. It may not be very interesting to a child, but I think that you, as well as Grandmother, ought to attend this morning. I want you to be able to say that you have heard the great Daniel Webster make a plea."
"Do you mean Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, Grandfather?" inquired Lucy. "I thought," she resumed rather timidly, for she feared Grandfather might think she was contradicting him, "I thought people didn't like him any more."