Young Rex Stout’s Day
School 4 hours
Travel time to and from school 2 hours
Sleep 8 hours
Mathematical wizardry 2 hours
Meals 2 hours
Ghost-exorcising and such sundries 1 hour
Going to church 1 hour
Committing routine annoyances 2 hours
Natural odds and ends 1 hour
Total 22 hours
Left for reading 2 hours
If this figure seems low, it is because it is estimated on a yearly basis, allowing for vacations. As for holidays, I couldn’t be bothered figuring them in.
2 At one place in the Profile, I got the impression that the nearest school was nine miles away and thus involved a round trip of eighteen miles. So, considering the transportation of the period, I figure the portal-to-portal time expenditure, spread over a seven-day week. must have averaged about two hours a day.
3 Mr. Johnston tells fully of the tyke’s mathematical prowess and of the exhibitions of it he gave, indicating that he spent a good deal of time on this branch of tiresomeness. I’ve let it go, conservatively, at two hours daily.
4 Come to look back at the Profile, it was the church and not the school that I took to be nine miles away, but, at that, the church was probably near the school, and since this garrulous lad Stout used to engage his Sunday-school teacher in arguments about such things as the possibility of changing water into wine, the whole process of Sunday-school attending must have used up seven hours a week, or an average of one hour a day. In debating a much simpler feat-turning wine into water-I have heard arguments continue for weeks and months between certain saloon proprietors accused of this metamorphosis and the customers at the bar, so I think my estimate is fair.
5 I am moved to explain here that Rex Stout between the ages of six and eleven does not appeal to me as the most entrancing of youngsters, at least as set forth by Mr. Johnston. To put it another way, if his duplicate were up for adoption this minute, my dear ones and I would take a distinctly bleak attitude toward any effort to fob him off on us. Therefore, I have assumed that the lad set aside an hour or so a day for being a nuisance generally, purely as a matter of routine.
My reasoning thus far compels me either to accept the deduction that young Rex Stout read a hundred and ninety-seven pages in two hours of every day from the age of six to the age of eleven or to reject the deduction. I reject the deduction. That would be ninety-eight and a half pages an hour, or about 1.6 pages a minute. Mostly heavy stuff, too-biography, history, philosophy, science, poetry. I simply don’t believe it. Not for 1.6 minutes do I believe it.
Sincerely,
John McNulty
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Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Before I Die
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
3. Instead of Evidence
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
The World of Rex Stout
FB2 document info
Document ID: 0b8d106f-2418-4b93-985f-11f4d1e2e73f
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 30.4.2012
Created using: calibre 0.8.13 software
Document authors :
Rex Stout
About
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