منتديات المُنى والأرب - The Encyclopedia of All Knowledge

The Encyclopedia of All Knowledge

"Young man, would you please take this horse down to the river, and try to make him drink?"

"But sir, everyone knows..."

The old man interrupted, "Yes, yes, I know. Here is a penny for your efforts. Please try to make him drink."

Young Jack shrugged his shoulders, and took the horse's reins, and led it to the stream. But, try as he might, he couldn't get the horse to drink. The old man was writing in a notebook. "That is good enough, my boy. Here take this other horse and lead them into the middle of the stream. That is good. Now climb onto one of the horses." The horse was very gentle, and Jack was able to climb onto its back. "Now get onto the other horse." Neither horse moved, and Jack was able to climb from one horse to the other. "Excellent!" As he wrote in his notebook, the old man muttered, "You can change horses in the middle of a stream, just as I suspected."

Soon, Jack and the old man were riding side by side, on the horses. "My name is Matthew. People call me Old Matthew." He handed Jack two coins. "I have need of a helper, if you are available to work. I can pay you ten pennies per day. I am compiling an encyclopedia of all knowledge. Today, I have added two items of knowledge to my encyclopedia: You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink, although I suspect we could make it drink by depriving it of water for a few hours; we must test that theory. And the other thing is that you can change horses in the middle of a stream." Later that day, they showed that money is the root of 80% of all evil, plus or minus 5%.

"Young Jack, I see that your shirt is torn. It looks like it may require about nine stitches to repair it. If that is so, then it would seem that a stitch in time would have saved eight."

"Wouldn't that save nine?"

"No, no, one of those stitches would have to be stitched regardless. The other eight would be saved, however. We must test this theory further."

On the way to Old Matthew's home, they encountered the court jester from the nearby castle. He was humming a tune, and doing cart wheels. Old Matthew greeted him and remarked, "You seem to be in even better spirits than usual."

"Yes, my lord, today was payday. Here, you can have my money, I would only spend it."

As Old Matthew and Jack rode on, Old Matthew muttered, "Hm, it would seem that a fool and his money are soon parted." He wrote that down. "I will just hold on to his money until he asks for it."

They entered Old Matthew's home, which was made of stone and wood. "Ah, there is no place like home." He wrote that in his notebook. A fat woman limped into the room from another room. Old Matthew said, "Ah there you are, my dear. Young Jack, I would like to introduce my wife, Hilda. Hilda, this is Young Jack, my new helper. What happened to your foot my dear?"

"Oh some sticks and stones fell out of the ceiling. I think that my foot may be broken."

Old Matthew wrote in his notebook, "Sticks and stones may break Hilda's bones." Then he said, "That does not sound quite right. It is incomplete somehow."

Jack suggested, "How about '... but pillows will never hurt me?'"

"No, I once had my nose broken by a pillow. There must be something that will never hurt."

"How about feathers?"

"Not bad. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but feathers will never hurt me, unless they are in a pillow of course, or attached to an arrow. Almost perfect, I would say."

The next day, Jack went around the village, examining people's torn garments, measuring the tears. Old Matthew determined that a stitch in time saves 8.75. But the results varied considerably. So he rounded off to 9. Jack found a ring in the mud, and thought that it might be gold. It turned out to be brass. Old Matthew observed, "All that glitters is not gold. Hmmm." And he began writing in his notebook.

One day, as they were on the road collecting data, "What a fine day it is, Young Jack!"

"Yes sir. The grass is certainly green over on the other side of that fence."

"Yes it is. I wonder what makes it so green, superior farming techniques perhaps. Come along. Perhaps we can discover the reason for this greener grass."

After they had struggled through the fence, "Well I'll be! Now the grass is greener back where we were. You go back through the fence, Young Jack. We must get to the bottom of this."

Soon Jack shouted, "Now the grass is greener where you are, sir."

"No Young Jack, the grass is definitely greener where you are."

Old Matthew and Jack switched places several times. Finally Old Matthew deduced that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence about 70% of the time, as some grass is not very green at all. It was another victory for knowledge over ignorance.

Back on the road, Old Matthew said, "Maybe the sky is bluer on the other side of the fence. I never thought to look. Well, we can test that tomorrow."

One day Jack came running, in an obvious state of excitement. "Sir, I may have discovered a new mystery of nature! I was just brushing my teeth, and I sneezed, and the tooth paste disappeared. I looked everywhere, and it had just disappeared. I think that we should study that mystery." Old Matthew handed him a mirror. Just then the toothpaste fell from Jack's nose onto the mirror. Jack was amazed, "You made the toothpaste reappear!"

"The toothpaste was on your nose, all along." He noticed Jack's disappointed expression. "Never-the-less, we may be able to salvage a law of nature out of this. How about, 'the greater the sneeze, the greater the distance?'" Jack ran off to quantify the experiment. They went through a lot of pepper that day, in the pursuit of knowledge.

On another day, Jack said, "Sir, I thought of some inspirational advice. Would you want to include some of that in your encyclopedia?"

"Perhaps. Let me hear it."

"The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life."

"That is inspirational in your opinion?"

"How about: Climb every unclimbable ladder?"

"Maybe not. I think that my encyclopedia should be limited to facts, and not advice."

And they discovered many facts indeed. For instance a watched pot boils slightly more slowly than an unwatched pot. Eventually The Encyclopedia of All Knowledge (popularly known as Old Matthew's Monstrosity) grew to 54 volumes. None of the 54 volumes is known to exist in this day and age. But many of the included facts have come down to us, some in modified form.

Author's note: I identify with both Jack and Old Matthew. I have a great thirst (or maybe hunger) for knowledge, the more trivial the better. By the way, it has actually been shown that you can sometimes change horses in the middle of a stream.