Precision—See [Ahead of Circumstances].
PRECOCITY
Precocity is not always a cerebral disease, certainly, tho where it is pronounced the presumption is not in its favor. Slower growths are the surer and attain the greater heights. Usually precocity wants a depth which is not supplied to the subject in more mature years. With the comparatively few exceptions that can be noted, it lacks staying power. The most remarkable case of collapsed precocity that occurs to us is that of the Englishman Betty, the “young Roscius.” He went on the stage at the age of twelve years in 1803, played Hamlet and other prominent characters, and in four years amassed a fortune of over $150,000, at a time when money was worth twice its present face value. For twenty-eight nights in Drury Lane he earned over $3,000 a night. He left the stage to go to school, and on his return, three years later, made an utter failure and never amounted to anything as an actor thereafter.—New York World.
(2471)
It is said of Jonathan Edwards that he commenced the study of Latin at six years of age; at eight he was keenly interested in spiritual matters. At ten he wrote, like a philosopher, a quaint and humorous essay on the immortality of the soul, and at twelve years of age wrote an original paper on the habits of the flying-spider.
(2472)
Of Mrs. Wesley’s father it is gravely recorded that “when about five or six years old he began a practise, which he afterward continued, of reading twenty chapters every day in the Bible.” The phenomenon of a child not six years old who solemnly forms, in the cells of his infantile brain, the plan of reading twenty chapters of the Bible every day—and sticks to it through a long life—would in these modern days be reckoned nothing less than astonishing. Of Hetty Wesley, the sister of John, it is on record that at eight years of age she could read the Greek Testament. Do any such wonderful children exist in these days?—W. H. Fitchett, “Wesley and His Century.”
(2473)