Page:Henry Ford's Own Story.djvu/79

 live in a boarding house until he got a job. On the last morning when he picked up the telescope bags, ready to start to the station, his wife went over to the house for the last time to see that everything was snug and safe to leave.

Then she came into the parlor where he was waiting and looked around the bare room stripped of its bright Brussels carpets, lace curtains and shiny furniture.

"Well, we'll come back some day, won't we," she said, "when the gasoline engine is built?"

She had spoken for the first time a phrase they were to repeat frequently, with every accent of expectation, hope, discouragement and irony, during the next ten years, "When the gasoline engine is built!"

A crowd of their friends gathered at the station to say good-by. With an intention of being tactful, they avoided any mention of Henry's purpose in leaving Greenfield.

"Sorry to lose you, Ford. Hope you'll be coming back before long," they said, and he knew the neighborhood had learned of his intention to invent something and thought him suddenly become a fool.

As soon as they reached Detroit and found a boarding house where he could leave his wife he started out to get a job. He wanted one where he could learn something about electricity. So far his knowledge of it was purely theoretical, gained from reading and thinking. Electric