The knowledge machine
I just laughed lightly. "Oh, I'm not one to brag about my learning. I kind of like to keep my lamp hid underneath a bushel."

"I notice that your grammar is still hidden under a bushel," Helen, like a wife does, put in.

That dashed me a little. I'd forgotten that my grammar still wasn't so hot. We hadn't had any tape on elementary English Grammar.

That night after the others went, I told Helen the whole story and how our money was now invested in the Electro-Education Company.

She hit the sky. I had been trapped by a swindler, I was an idiot, and we were going to die in the poorhouse. Next morning she went with me to give Carter what-for and demand our money back.

Carter handled her beautifully. He inveigled her to put on the learning-cap, and then shot French, Music, Art and a lot of other stuff into her. From then on, Helen was enthusiastic.

So next week, we hung out a sign and advertised in the newspapers. Carter had written the ad, and it was a good one.

"Do you want to know more?" it asked. "Do you yearn to learn? But are you repelled by the dreary prospect of months and years of study?

"Electro-Education is the answer! Study, classrooms, schools, are now obsolete. We guarantee to bestow on you in a few hours enough higher education to pass any university's graduation examinations."

Next morning we found a half-dozen prospects waiting to get into our Electro-Education shop. Only it turned out they were all reporters who had come to write funny pieces about our project.

Carter was smart. He didn't get mad, he just kidded them along and got one of them to try a sample course. Then he shot a full course of Higher Accounting into that chap.

It seems that that reporter was a guy who never had been able to add two and two, he had such a blind spot for arithmetic. When he got up and realized how much he knew, he let out a yell.

The other newshawks accused him of faking, at first. But the argument induced some of the others to try it. Carter gave them Chinese, Nuclear Physics, anything they asked.

That night Electro-Education hit the front pages of the newspapers with a bang! Some of the articles still claimed it was a fake, but a lot of the 
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