“No, sir, I couldn't. I forget them as soon as I've done with them. Besides, I couldn't make a line without baby on my knee. We make them together, you know. They're just as much baby's as mine. It's he that pulls them out of me.”
“I suspect the child's a genius,” said the poet to himself, “and that's what makes people think him silly.”
Now if any of my child readers want to know what a genius is—shall I try to tell them, or shall I not? I will give them one very short answer: it means one who understands things without any other body telling him what they mean. God makes a few such now and then to teach the rest of us.
“Do you like riddles?” asked Mr. Raymond, turning over the leaves of his own book.
“I don't know what a riddle is,” said Diamond.
“It's something that means something else, and you've got to find out what the something else is.”
Mr. Raymond liked the old-fashioned riddle best, and had written a few—one of which he now read.
I have only one foot, but thousands of toes;
My one foot stands, but never goes.
I have many arms, and they're mighty all;
And hundreds of fingers, large and small.
From the ends of my fingers my beauty grows.
I breathe with my hair, and I drink with my toes.
I grow bigger and bigger about the waist,
And yet I am always very tight laced.
None e'er saw me eat—I've no mouth to bite;
Yet I eat all day in the full sunlight.
In the summer with song I shave and quiver,
But in winter I fast and groan and shiver.
“Do you know what that means, Diamond?” he asked, when he had finished.
“No, indeed, I don't,” answered Diamond.