ShrinkRap: The Encyclopaedia Set

Stephen had reached the grand young age when his childhood came to an abrupt end.  The reason for this change in the boy’s fortunes could be traced to the day a door-to-door salesman talked Stephen’s parents into buying a multi-volume encyclopaedia. And that was only a children’s encyclopaedia, his parents not wanting one for themselves – that would have taken a super salesman – but for him.

At the presentation ceremony, Stephen was assured the encyclopaedia would help him get on in the world.  This was meant, of course, in a materialistic sense and it shows a rather touching view of the world and how one gets on in it about which Stephen would have learnt more from listening to the salesman than from reading the whole of the encyclopaedia.

A bookcase was duly bought – until then there had been no need of one – and the encyclopaedia paraded along the bottom shelf which, understandably, sagged beneath the weight imposed on it – volume after volume, page after page, word after word. Stephen’s spirits, too, may be said to have sagged at the sight of the encyclopaedia set – he, after all, was the one expected to read it.

MW