The Peterkin PapersHale, Lucretia P. (Lucretia Peabody)
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The Peterkin Papers
Hale, Lucretia P. (Lucretia Peabody)
Family life -- Juvenile fiction; Humorous stories
Elizabeth Eliza looked at Agamemnon, as he walked silently into the
house. She would not now speak to him of the patent; but she recalled
some words of Solomon John. When they were discussing the patent he
had said that many an inventor had grown gray before his discovery was
acknowledged by the public. Others might reap the harvest, but it
came, perhaps, only when he was going to his grave.
Elizabeth Eliza looked at Agamemnon reverently, and followed him
silently into the house.
AGAMEMNON'S CAREER.
There had apparently been some mistake in Agamemnon's education. He
had been to a number of colleges, indeed, but he had never completed
his course in any one. He had continually fallen into some difficulty
with the authorities. It was singular, for he was of an inquiring
mind, and had always tried to find out what would be expected of him,
but had never hit upon the right thing.
Solomon John thought the trouble might be in what they called the
elective system, where you were to choose what study you might take.
This had always bewildered Agamemnon a good deal.
"And how was a feller to tell," Solomon John had asked, "whether he
wanted to study a thing before he tried it? It might turn out awful
hard!"
Agamemnon had always been fond of reading, from his childhood up. He
was at his book all day long. Mrs. Peterkin had imagined he would come
out a great scholar, because she could never get him away from his
books.
And so it was in his colleges; he was always to be found in the
library, reading and reading. But they were always the wrong books.
For instance: the class were required to prepare themselves on the
Spartan war. This turned Agamemnon's attention to the Fenians, and to
study the subject he read up on "Charles O'Malley," and "Harry
Lorrequer," and some later novels of that sort, which did not help him
on the subject required, yet took up all his time, so that he found
himself unfitted for anything else when the examinations came. In
consequence he was requested to leave.
Agamemnon always missed in his recitations, for the same reason that
Elizabeth Eliza did not get on in school, because he was always asked
the questions he did not know. It seemed provoking; if the professors
had only asked something else! But they always hit upon the very
things he had not studied up.
Mrs. Peterkin felt this was encouraging, for Agamemnon knew the things
they did not know in colleges. In colleges they were willing to take
for students only those who already knew certain things. She thought
Agamemnon might be a professor in a college for those students who
didn't know those things.
"I suppose these professors could not have known a great deal," she
added, "or they would not have asked you so many questions; they would
have told you something."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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