Retired Prodigy

Ten years ago Manhattan was a forcing bed for prodigious children, and one night Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr. gave a party for them. A onetime prodigy who had used a typewriter at 3, written a poem and made a public speech at 4, Miss Stoner invited such characters as William James Sidis, who at n set Harvard agog, and Nathalia Crane, who at 9 published poems. The party's chief exhibit was Ellen Elizabeth Benson, the plump young daughter of a Texas newspaper couple. When she was 8, Ellen Elizabeth Benson's mind had been rated as equal to that of a "superior adult." Six months later her elders found her qualified, on paper, to teach in a Los Angeles high school. At 12 she scored an I. Q. of 214, highest ever recorded in the U. S. in a Binet-Simon test. That same year she went to Barnard College, wrote six Vanity Fair articles which were later published in book form as The Younger Generation.

Aware that the public likes to know what becomes of prodigies, Newsman Tom Pettey of the New York Herald Tribune last week set out to find this wonder-child of the last decade. He rediscovered her in a small suburban apartment. Last year she, aged 20, married an ice cream company employe named Harold S. Leach. He works nights and she works days, as cashier for Chevrolet at the Manhattan General Motors Building.

Said Mrs. Leach last week to Newshawk Pettey: "It was awful, being a child prodigy. I'm happier now. Of course, I would like to have a literary job -- if it paid good money. The trouble with high 'I. Q.' children is that they get through school too early. Nobody wants to hire a 15-year-old girl to do literary work no matter how many scales she has broken in Binet-Simon tests. I had to have a job when I got through college -- and I got one and kept it.

"I'm going to grow up and see something of life before I resume my writing. . . . When I think of how some of the others turned out I know I'm lucky.

"My husband is perfect! I call him 'honey,' but never Harold unless I'm mad. Where did I meet him? Well, I've been on my own since I got out of school, for mother travels a lot. I was living in a boarding house and [Harold] came along. In a couple of weeks we were engaged and in two months we were married. . . . I'm the only child prodigy Harold ever knew, so, of course, he thinks child prodigies are swell. He has no literary background, but he doesn't mind mine. ..."

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