WORTHINGTON BOTTS AND THE STEAM MACHINE

If somebody wrote it, I can know it,"" says turn-of-the-century Worthington Botts, who reads when he walks, when he eats, when he pumps water, and when he milks the cow. And when his mother tells him to ""Stop reading and look what you're doing,"" he answers that ""There are too many things I don't know."" Then Worthington Botts reads about a steam machine and decides to make one to do his chores so he'll have more time to read. By a fluke that is too mechanically arranged to be hilarious, the steam machine helps Worthington's team beat the Tufftown Nine at baseball; but Worthington scraps it anyway. He has found that ""All I did was fix it"" and he has more time to read without it. There's a lesson there about machines, but the story turns out to be only minimally amusing despite the bouncy beginning and similarly corky cartoons.