The Eternal Wonder Read Online Free PDF Page A

only money. It was nothing unless it was given in exchange for what was wanted. This was its value, this was its meaning.
    His mother had looked at him strangely that day when he had repeated after her perfectly the names of the coins.
    “You never forget anything, do you, Rannie?” she had said.
    “No,” he had replied. “I might need to remember, so I mustn’t forget.”
    She often looked at him strangely, as though she were afraid of him.
    “Why do you look at me hard, Mama?” he asked.
    “I don’t really know,” she had replied honestly. “I think it is because I never saw a little boy like you.”
    He thought this over but without understanding it. Somehow it made him feel lonely, but he did not have time to think about it, because he wanted to learn to read.
    “Books,” he said to his father one day. “Why are books?”
    His father was always reading books. He was a college professor. At night he read books and wrote down words on paper.
    “You can learn anything from books,” his father said.
    It was a snowy day, a Saturday, when his father was at home reading books.
    “I want to read too,” he told his father.
    “You’ll learn when you start school,” his father said.
    “I want to learn now,” he said. “I want to read all the books in the world.”
    His father laughed and put down the book he was reading. “Very well,” he said. “Fetch me a piece of paper and a pencil and I will show you how to begin to read.”
    He ran to the kitchen, where his mother was cooking the dinner.
    “Pencil and paper,” he said briskly. “I am going to read.”
    His mother put down the big spoon with which she was stirring something in a pot on the stove. She went into the study, where his father was reading.
    “You aren’t going to teach that baby to read!” she exclaimed.
    “He’s no baby,” his father retorted. “If you ask me, he never was a baby. He wants to read. Of course I’ll teach him.”
    “I don’t believe in forcing children,” his mother said.
    “I’m not forcing him—he’s forcing me,” his father said, laughing. “All right, Rannie—give me the paper and pencil.”
    He forgot his mother and she went away and left them. His father printed a line of marks on the paper.
    “These are the bricks words are made of—twenty-six of them. They are called letters.”
    “All words?” he asked. “All those books full of words?”
    “All words, all books—in English, that is,” his father replied. “And each brick has a name of its own and a sound of its own. I’ll tell you the names, first.”
    Whereupon his father repeated clearly and slowly the names of the letters. Three such repetitions and he knew the name of each letter. His father tested him by writing the letters out of order, but he knew them all.
    “Good,” his father said with surprised looks. “Very good. Now for what they say. Each has a sound.”
    For the next hour he listened closely to what each letter said in sound. “Now I can read,” he exclaimed. “I can read because I understand.”
    “Not so fast,” his father told him. “Letters can say several sounds if they are put together. But you’ve learned enough for one day.”
    “I can read because I know how reading is done,” he insisted. “I know and so I can do it.”
    “All right,” his father said. “Try for yourself, you can always ask.”
    And he went back to his own reading.
     
    AFTER THIS SNOWY SATURDAY WHENhe was three years old, he spent most of his time in learning how to read by himself. At first he had to ask many questions of his mother, running to find where she was in the house, making beds, sweeping floors and such things as occupied her from morning until night.
    “What is this word?” he asked.
    She was always patient. Whatever she was doing she stopped and looked where his small forefinger pointed.
    “That long word? Oh, Rannie, you won’t be using it for such a while—‘intellectual.’”
    “What does it