Сборник лучших произведений американской классической литературы. Уровень 4

He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica[79 - He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica – Он прокрадывался вниз по чёрной лестнице в детскую комнату с томиком энциклопедии «Британника»], which he would read through an afternoon, while his cotton cows were left neglected on the floor. Mr. Button could do nothing against such stubbornness.

The sensation was, at first, huge in Baltimore. But the outbreak of the Civil War drew the city's attention to other things. A few people who tried to be polite about the child finally declared that the baby resembled his grandfather. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were not pleased, and Benjamin's grandfather was furiously insulted.

Benjamin, once he left the hospital, took life as he found it. Several small boys were brought to see him, and he spent all afternoon trying to work up an interest in tops and marbles- he even managed, quite accidentally, to break a kitchen window with a stone from a sling shot, which secretly delighted his father.

Thereafter Benjamin decided to break something every day, but he did these things only because they were expected of him, and because he was by nature obliging. When his grandfather's initial antagonism wore off, Benjamin and that gentleman took enormous pleasure in one another's company. They would sit for hours, these two, so different in age and experience, and, like old friends, discuss with tireless monotony the slow events of the day.

He was as puzzled as anyone else at the advanced age of his mind and body at birth. He read up on it in the medical journal, but found that no such case had been previously recorded.

When he was five, he was sent to kindergarten, where he was taught the art of pasting green paper on orange paper, of weaving coloured maps and manufacturing eternal cardboard necklaces. He often fell asleep in the middle of these tasks, a habit, which both irritated and frightened his young teacher. To his relief she complained to his parents, and he was removed from the school. The Roger Buttons told their friends that they felt he was too young.