Cheaper by the Dozen

said, "you older children stop showing off and..." Then he registered a double take.
    "What did you say, Jackie boy?" Dad cooed.
    "Two fifty-six."
    Dad drew a nickel out of his pocket and grew very serious.
    "Have you been memorizing the squares as I asked the questions to the older children, Jackie?"
    Jack didn't know whether that was good or bad, but he nodded.
    "If you can tell me what seventeen times seventeen is, Jackie boy, this nickel is yours."
    "Sure, Daddy," said Jack. "Two eighty-nine."
    Dad passed him the nickel and turned beaming to Mother.
    "Lillie," he said, "we'd better keep that boy, too."

    Martha, at eleven, became the fastest in the family at mental mathematics. Still feeling frustrated because he hadn't been able to take Ernestine to the speed typing contest, Dad insisted on taking Martha to an adding machine exhibition in New York.
    "No, Lillie," he told Mother. "This one is not high strung. I was willing to compromise on moving pictures of the typing, but you can't take movies of this. She goes to New York with me."
    Martha stood up on a platform at the adding machine show, and answered the problems quicker than the calculators could operate. Dad, of course, stood alongside her. After the final applause, he told the assemblage modestly:
    "There's really nothing to it. I've got a boy named Jade at home who's almost as good as she is. I would have brought him here with me, but Mrs. Gilbreth said he's still too young. Maybe next year, when he's four..."
    By this time, all of us had begun to suspect that Dad had his points as a teacher, and that he knew what he was talking about. There was one time, though, when he failed.
    "Tomorrow," he told us at dinner, "I'm going to make a cement bird bath. All those who want to watch me should come home right after school, and we'll make it in the late afternoon."
    Dad had long since given up general contracting, to devote all of his time to scientific management and motion study, but we knew he had been an expert bricklayer and had written a book on reinforced concrete.
    The next afternoon he built a mold, mixed his concrete confidently, and poured his bird bath.
    "We'll let it set for awhile, and then take the mold off," he said.
    Dad had to go out of town for a few weeks. When he returned, he changed into old clothes, whistled assembly, and led us out into the yard.
    "I've had this bird bath on my mind all the time I was away," he said. "It should be good and hard now."
    "Will the birds come and take a bath in it, Daddy?" Fred asked.
    "I would say, Freddy, that birds will come for miles to take a bath in it. Indeed, on Saturday nights I would say the birds will be standing in line to use our lovely bathtub."
    He leaned over the mold. "Stand back, everybody," he said. 'We will now unveil the masterpiece. Get your towels ready, little birdies, it's almost bathing time."
    We stood hushed and waiting. But as he lifted the bird bath out of the mold, there was an unbelievable grating sound, and a pile of dust and rubble lay at our feet. Dad stood deflated and silent. He took it so seriously that we felt sorry for him.
    "Never mind, Daddy," Lill said. "We know you tried, anyway."
    "Bill," Dad said sternly. "Did you?"
    "Did I what, Daddy?"
    "Did you touch my bird bath?"
    "No, Daddy, honest."
    Dad reached down and picked up some of the concrete. It crumbled into dust between his fingers.
    "Too much sand," he muttered. And then to Bill. "No, it's my fault. Too much sand. I know you didn't touch it, and I'm sorry I implied that you did."
    But you couldn't keep Dad down for long.
    "Well," he said, "that didn't work out so very well. But I've built some of the finest and tallest buildings in the whole world. And some bridges and roads and canals that stretch for miles and miles."
    "Is a bird bath harder to build than a tall building, Daddy?" asked Dan.
    Dad, deflated all over again, kicked the rubble with his toe and started toward the house.
    "Too much sand," he muttered

Chapter 7
Skipping Through School

    Mother saw her children as a dozen individuals, a dozen different personalities, who eventually would have to make their ways separately in the world. Dad saw them as an all-inclusive group, to be brought up under one master plan that would be best for everybody. What was good for Anne, he believed, would be good for Ernestine, for Bill, for Jack.
    Skipping grades in school was part of Dad's master plan. There was no need, he said, for his children to be held back