An Embryo Mind Reader

Adam was like him as possible up to the time he married, yet Adam
was the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a
redeeming feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman,
four years his senior, who had been teaching in the Hartley
schools when he began courting her. She was a prim, fussy woman,
born of a prim father and a fussy mother, so what was to be
expected? Her face was narrow and set, her body and her movements
almost rigid, her hair, always parted, lifted from each side and
tied on the crown, fell in stiff little curls, the back part
hanging free. Her speech, as precise as her movements, was formed
into set habit through long study of the dictionary. She was born
antagonistic to whatever existed, no matter what it was. So
surely as every other woman agreed on a dress, a recipe, a house,
anything whatever, so surely Agatha thought out and followed a
different method, the disconcerting thing about her being that she
usually finished any undertaking with less exertion, ahead of
time, and having saved considerable money.

She could have written a fine book of synonyms, for as certainly
as any one said anything in her presence that she had occasion to
repeat, she changed the wording to six-syllabled mouthfuls,
delivered with ponderous circumlocution. She subscribed to papers
and magazines, which she read and remembered. And she danced!
When other women thought even a waltz immoral and shocking;
perfectly stiff, her curls exactly in place, Agatha could be seen,
and frequently was seen, waltzing on the front porch in the arms
of, and to a tune whistled by young Adam, whose full name was Adam
Alcibiades Bates. In his younger days, when discipline had been
required, Kate once had heard her say to the little fellow: "Adam
Alcibiades ascend these steps and proceed immediately to your
maternal ancestor."