Horace sat down and Mr. Cowan sat opposite him, with his unwinking blue eyes but two feet from Horace's mild brown ones and with no charitable steel screen between them.
"I am going to put you to the test," said Mr. Cowan.
Horace wildly thought of thumbscrews. He sat bolt upright while Mr. Cowan whipped from his pocket a tape measure and, bending over, measured the breadth of Horace Nimms' brow. With an ominous clucking noise the expert set down the measurement on a chart in front of him. Then he carefully measured each of Horace's ears. The measurements appeared to shock him. He wrote them down. He applied his tape to Horace's nose and measured that organ. He surveyed Horace's forehead from several different angles. He measured the circumference of Horace's head. The result caused Mr. Cowan acute distress, for he set it down on his elaborate chart and glowered at it a full minute.
Then he transferred his attention and tape to Horace's stubby hands. He measured them, counted the fingers, contemplated the thumb gravely and wrote several hundred words on the chart. Horace thought he recognized one of the words as "mechanical."
"Now," said Mr. Cowan solemnly, "we will test your mental reactions."
He said this more to himself than to Horace Nimms, on whose brow tiny pearls of perspiration were appearing. Mr. Cowan drew forth a stop watch and spread another chart on the table before him.
"Fill this out—ple-e-ese," he said, pushing the chart toward Horace. "You have just five minutes to do it."
Horace Nimms, dismayed, almost dazed, seized the paper and started to work at it with feverish confusion. He boggled through a maze full of pitfalls for a tired, rattled man:
If George Washington discovered America, write the capital of Nebraska in this space.........But if he was called the Father of His Country, how much is 49 × 7?........Now name three presidents of the United States in alphabetical order, including Jefferson, but do not do so if ice is warm.........If Adam was the first man, dot all the "i's" in "eleemosynary" and write your last name backward.........Omit the next three questions with the exception of the last two: How much is 6 × 9 = 54?........What is the capital of Omaha?........How many "e's" are there in the sentence, "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?"........Put a cross over all the consonants in the foregoing sentence. Now fill in the missing words in the following sentences: "While picking........I was stung in the........by a........." "Don't bite the........that feeds you."
How old are you? Multiply your age by the year you were born in. Erase your answer. If a pound of steel is heavier than a pound of oyster crackers, don't write anything in this space.........Otherwise write three words that rhyme with "icicle." Now write your name, and then cross out all the consonants.