Lessons from a Watermelon

[304 words] William Jennings Bryan wrote of a visit he made to a restaurant in which he ordered a slice of watermelon. He writes, “I was so pleased with the taste of the melon that I took the seeds home with me to plant in my garden. That night a thought came to my mind. How many watermelon seeds would it take to make a pound? The next day I weighed them and found that it would take about 5,000 dried seeds to weigh one pound. A few weeks later I planted just one of the seeds. Under the influence of sunshine and shower, the little seed had taken off its coat and gone to work. It had gathered from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forced the enormous weight through a tiny stem and built a watermelon. On the outside it had a covering of green…