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I remember another episode where parental self-control made an indelible impression on a young man.  This story was told me by Charles Edison, son of the great inventor, Thomas A. Edison.  On the night of Dec. 9, 1914, when Charles was in his twenties, the huge Edison industrial plant in West Orange, N.J., was destroyed by fire.  The loss was estimated at two million dollars. The owners were insured for only about a tenth of that amount, due to the mistaken notion then prevalent that concrete buildings were completely fireproof.

The old inventor at that time was sixty-seven, and most men would have been crushed by such a disaster.  But his son told me that at the height of the fire, his white-haired father clutched him by the shoulder and shouted enthusiastically in his ear, “Find your mother and bring her down here.  She’ll never see such a magnificent sight as long as she lives:”

Later he said earnestly to Charles, “There is great value in a catastrophe like this.  All our mistakes have been burned up.  Now we can start all over again.”  And within ten weeks the Edison company was back in full production.

Sin, Sex and Self-control, Norman Vincent Peale, pages 142,143