III

THIS CHILD KNOWS THE ANSWER--DO YOU?


We are occasionally confronted in the advertisements by the picture of
an offensively bright-looking little boy, fairly popping with
information, who, it is claimed in the text, knows all the inside dope
on why fog forms in beads on a woolen coat, how long it would take to
crawl to the moon on your hands and knees, and what makes oysters so
quiet.

The taunting catch-line of the advertisement is: "This Child Knows the
Answer--Do You?" and the idea is to shame you into buying a set of books
containing answers to all the questions in the world except the question
"Where is the money coming from to buy the books?"

Any little boy knowing all these facts would unquestionably be an asset
in a business which specialized in fog-beads or lunar transportation
novelties, but he would be awful to have about the house.

"Spencer," you might say to him, "where are Daddy's slippers?" To which
he would undoubtedly answer: "I don't know, Dad," (disagreeable little
boys like that always call their fathers "Dad" and stand with their feet
wide apart and their hands in their pockets like girls playing boys'
rôles on the stage) "but I _do_ know this, that all the Nordic peoples
are predisposed to astigmatism because of the glare of the sun on the
snow, and that, furthermore, if you were to place a common ordinary
marble in a glass of luke-warm cider there would be a precipitation