“One lady … once complained to Dr. Louis Agassiz, a distinguished scientist, that she had never really had a chance to learn. She told him that she and her sister ran a boardinghouse and that she didn’t have time for anything else. He asked what type of work she did, and she replied:
“ ‘I skin potatoes and chop onions.’
“He asked, ‘Where do you sit as you do this?’
“ ‘On the bottom steps of the kitchen stairs.’
“ ‘Where do your feet rest?’
“ ‘On the glazed brick.’
“ ‘What is glazed brick?’
“ ‘I don’t know, sir.’
“ ‘How long have you been sitting there?’
“ ‘Fifteen years.’
“ ‘Madam, here is my address,’ said Dr. Agassiz. ‘Would you kindly write me a letter concerning the nature of a glazed brick?’
“She took him seriously. She looked up ‘brick’ in the dictionary but felt that the definition was too simple to send to a famous scientist. So she looked in the encyclopedia. As she read there about bricks, she came to words that she didn’t understand. So she looked them up. And then, because she really became interested in what she was learning, she visited museums and brickyards. When she finished her studies, she sat down and wrote Dr. Agassiz a thirty-six page letter on the subject of glazed brick.
“Back came a letter from Dr. Agassiz informing her that with just a few minor changes he had published her letter and was sending $250. At the bottom of the letter he asked, ‘What was under those bricks?’
“She looked. There were ants under the bricks. So she began to study ants. She found there were between eighteen hundred and twenty-five hundred different kinds. She became fascinated by the many varieties of ants and how and where they lived. After wide reading and careful study, she wrote three hundred and sixty pages on the subject to Dr. Agassiz. He published it as a book and sent her more money.
“With the money she had received she went to visit all the lands of her dreams” (in Duties and Blessings of the Priesthood, Part B, pp. 230–31; adapted from Marion D. Hanks, The Gift of Self [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1974], pp. 151–53).
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