Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1895-08-02
A WATCHED POT.

Seth Peters a watched pot and so he
never boiled.
When he was a baby he was a prefer
naturally wise-looking baby. So his moth
~ er and his father, his grandmother and his
grandfather, and all his brothers. sisters,
auuts and cousins watched him necessarily
in constant anticipation that he would do
~ some remarkable thing Such Websterian
eyes! Such a Shakespearean brow! Surely
no mortal child could have such features,
such expressions, such an indescribable
bearing and not do remarkable things.
So they watched him, night and day, mo-
y mentarily expecting to see the prodigy
6%& = veal himself in some Orphic utterance, some
hor% Solomon-like wisdom. But little Seth
,ora only distinguished himself by reaching for
~ III the moon and occasionally saying, "Gonk,"
"a } just like other babies.
nus. III 1t was a long while before Seth's vocab-
W. WIZ e. druary got beyond ''gonk." But he kept
TIN enS;u M Ta'1 fr " b,,ooJ onf srtbar
~ lhbver his eyes, his eyes retreated further
bWithn his head, and his deep and know
hI0 look grew deeper and more knowing
'rhapS daNe
err y6en he was hve years old and went to
I l16ool all his folks watched him, expecting
he would distinguish his family by his bril-
liancy, and at the end of the second week
n be able to teach his teacher
- But in learning the alphabet Seth mani
~ tested a strange preference fer the letter A.
~ He liked to have his teacher tell him over
and over again, week after week, that it
was A. 1t was wonderfully interesting
s-~'y to him and he never tired of hearing
oieeant 3eated over and over again.
ssreet very morning for weeks the teacher
SeoIge him it was A, and every time he acted
n LII he were glad to hear it. Every day
w. .; truth dawned upon him with the force
READY beauty of a revelation. His Webste-
Wofkn eyesgrew lustrous, and his Shake
lreearean brow expanded as each day, month
NATTER month, tIEr hssency of the great truth
- that it was borne in upon his mind.
IT seemed TO fill his soul with complete sat-
sfaction which asked for nothing more.
He didn't want to know anything about B.
He had no curiosity about c. He didn't
care to penetrate into such untraveed
depths of learning. He settled down to
the perfect and serene contentment that it
was A.
That is, he did until the next day, when
he wanted to have the beautiful, old, old
story repeated to him again Then the
old surprise would come into his eyes again,
the old wonder would suffuse his features.
He was lost in awe and contemplation
Still as he grew older, he grew more and
more profound, and his own family and all
his neighborhood and the whole school dis
trct watched him, like lynX-eyed detect
ives, expecting he would do some great
thing. He looked so wise that everybody
was convinced that he had great and
original mind.
And, in fact as he continued at school
he did give expression to very many orig
inal ideas. He had views on arithmetic
and geography, for instance, that were
-, widely at variance with the views of the
authors of those books. And when he
told the committeeman on examination day
tlat II times was B. and that the Miss
issipp river was the capital of Pennsylva-
MIA, the committeeman was rather inclined
to believe him, he looked so wise and so
deeply and darky intelligent about it.
And when the committeeman asked him
easy question in grammar, and he
replied, "Tan't no use nohow to study
grammar nor nothn', p" the committeeman
was almost persuaded to receive it as the
learned view of an expert and Danish gram
from the schools. And when he
read the sentence, "The cars ran over
deaf man and killed him. as, "The-calf-
ran-over-a-dead-m and -kied-him," the
committeeman never opened his head He
took it for granted that Seth knew more
about it than he did.
Seth was almost 80 years old before he
~ got into college, and then he entered not
EN much on the strength of his eXamina-
llht ton papers as on the strength of his looks
yN The professors concluded that it was i'm
n possible for so wise looking man not to
il be a man of talent and that his inaccurate
"a fs-t examination papers were due to the eccen-
ns To tIicties and idiosyncrases of genius. AL
&C. 49, his family and in fact, the whole town
now watched Seth with a keener interest
than ever Now, they said, he will shine
now he will dazzle, now he will show him
self The reason he has never distinguished
himself before is because the grammar
school and the high school are too elemen
tary Tor MS brain. Iney dlu not give MS
intellect room enough to swing ITSELF They
III were too contracted for his expansive mind
So they watched him with intentnes
greater than ever.
But the professors in that college neve
asked him any questions that he cared Il
answer. And always, in the classroom
"A they awkwardly asked him things of whicl
he was ignorant, and these stupid educators
during his entire four years course, neve
had tact enough to ask him about anything
of which h. mad any knowledge. And 81
they fStuousy lost all the benefits of hi
wisdom. They none the wiser TO
cir four years relations with him. Ii
fact, they were such unskilful interviewer
tia Seth remained non-committal al
through college, and all their attempts Il
draw him out were in vain In four year
he never told them a thing. 1t was grea
NJ loss to the professors.
~ When he got out of college he was bald
headed, and looked wiser than ever. II
settled down with his fatherNand mother
'' and they more impress& with tn
one and profundity of his mi II than eN
MIS-: Ere. In fact 1t is rumored that the
M juvenile woike to have him go neaI\the waite
y mont is to glat he would ignite the - -
Sm Perlments atwatched him, and the on' n
~ day evening. /
~ Warren MOORE N
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