THE PATHETIC PRODIGY
Meyer, Ernest L.
The Pathetic Prodigy By ERNEST L MEYER AFRIEND OF OURS has a chtfd named Van, and I've always felt sorry for the lad, though most parents may wonder why. Van is not quite five years old; his...
...A Field Of Buttercups "Later I learned it was unkind to touch the little fish, so I would watch them swim in and out of the sea-weed and pearl castles at the bottom of the bowl...
...Or I would set the bowl on the window ledge on a sunny day and watch my pets float in giant shadows across the walls and ceiling...
...I saw them often in my home, but my parents cruelly withheld from me the fact that they were small cyprinoids related to the true carp...
...Or I would idle for hours on the beach of Lake Michigan, patting the wet sand into shapes which were meaningless and had no names, but which I found good and desirable...
...Have you ever experienced any...
...Perhaps," I said, "there is no need to see one if you know all about them...
...Why, that's right," Van cried...
...A goldfish," said Van brightly, "is a small cypri-noid and is related to the true carp...
...F-e-l-i-c-i-t-y...
...No," said Van...
...Perhaps," I sighed...
...This is all very well for learned men in whiskers, Van,, but I think for a child there is more real comfort in smelling a wild rose than in knowing it belongs to the species Carolina, and more fun in rolling down a hillside than in repeating the Newtonian equation of gravity...
...I don't think I would have cared so much for the patter of rain on our zinc porch roof if I had known that it was only ordinary H20 coming into contact with a crystalline element made from sphalerite or calamine ore...
...He's amiable, well-behaved, but pale...
...Maybe because when you name and analyze something you rob it of a bit of its mystery, and when you rob it of mystery you take from it part of its beauty...
...I can spell it, too...
...I had hardly hung my coat on a peg when Van volunteered to spell out loud a number of words including Czechoslovakia, chrysanthemum, obbligato, trachyte, and souffle...
...He knows that galvanized iron is iron which has been dipped in hot zinc, and he can rattle off the chemical formula for sulphuric acid and the symbols for all the elements...
...All that I recall is that the goldfish were cool and slithery between my fingers, and that when I released them they swam swiftly about in the bowl, like the yellow flakes of Fall poplar leaves shaken against a circle of sky...
...No," said Van...
...He's a boy wonder, who some day will go blazing to radio fame like the Quiz Kids, and yet I feel sorry for him...
...Naming the name is depressing enough...
...Van Can Define Goldfish "Van," I said to the child, "I am delighted to find you so agile in the pursuit of information...
...Ranunculus acris...
...I confess that I never knew until you told me that a buttercup is a ranunculus acris...
...And when I ceased watching and turned to look at the fish themselves, it was just as if I had turned my eyes from Summer thunderclouds to a patch of buttercups...
...The other day I called at his home...
...Only in a picture in my natural history...
...I've never seen any...
...out of the shadows of the waving sea-weed...
...Their shadows were dark and restless, and wove in and...
...His father was busy at the moment, so Van entertained me in the living room, solidly lined with book-cases, amongst which Van roosted like an academic oyster in a cloister...
...Buttercups," noddeJ...
...Yet the experiment was pleasant, and we drew much laughter from the nonsense...
...You shift it from the realm of imagination to the realm of knowledge, from poetry to cataloguing...
...And yet, Van, I somehow was happy, snug, and dry while the rain splashed and drummed on the porch roof, without knowing anything about H20 and sphalerite...
...No," said Van...
...I am delighted to hear it," I said...
...It is a native of China, and its color is olive in its native state...
...Sometimes I really think that an illiterate savage enjoys more felicity than—" "Felicity," said Van...
...I don't think I would have enjoyed a ranunculus ac much as a buttercup...
...He spends the greater part of the day buried in reference works, he scoffs at the toys and Mother Goose books which are the bill-of-fare of the average child, and already, at the age of five, he is antique with lore and learning...
...I can spell that...
...Mystery And Beauty "I know," I said...
...Spell them he did, and correctly, and then I complimented him, and gathered him in my arms and sat him next to me on a great easy chair...
...Or I would come to grips with the strange world in which I found myself by breaking windows, shooting split-peas at perfect strangers, or rifling the family goldfish bowl...
...He can repeat the Greek alphabet, name and locate every country on the globe, and tell you its capital...
...When I was much older than you are, I squandered precious moments by playing run-sheep-run under the gas-lamps of Chicago, loving the mystery of flight through dark alleys...
...You were good enough to define water and zinc on my last visit here...
...Please don't," I pleaded...
...And that sounds like a silly superstition...
...Have you ever rolled in a field of buttercups, or pressed one to your nose to see whether it would leave a stain, which would indicate that gold would stick to you when you grew up and you'd be wealthy...
...He knows the names of all the planets and most of the constellations, and some of them are very whopping names, indeed...
...his father is a professor, and the boy is a prodigy...
...Have you ever seen a goldfish...
Vol. 7 • December 1943 • No. 52
