[figure description] Page 247.[end figure description]

“What a to-do people make because children happen
to know something when they are young!” said Mrs.
Partington, as she read an account of many men who
had been distinguished in early years. “Now, all these
together don't know so much, by one half, as Dolly
Sprigg's baby. That is a perfect prodigal, to be sure;
sich an intellect! Why, it got through its goo-googles,
and into its bar-bars, afore it was seven months old, and
when it was only a year and a half old it emptied a
snuff-box down its precious old grandmother's throat as
she was asleep, and came nigh suffocating the old lady
afore she could wake up to conscientiousness and spit it
out. There never was sich another, its mother says, —
and who knows so well as a mother what a child is, that
has watched over it, and seen it expand itself like a tansy
blossom, and sweet as a young cauliflower?”

The old lady was always eloquent on this topic; she
was a believer in prodigies, and thought Solomon must
have consulted some young mother when he wrote that
“every generation grows wiser and wiser.”

p677-273

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