AMAZING AMERICAN BOY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21258, 12 February 1931, Page 14

AMAZING AMERICAN BOY.

GROWS UP IN A NIGHT. DAILY SHAVE AT SIX YEARS. If anyone wants to annoy young Clarence Kehr, jun., of Toledo, Ohio, he has only to mention the name “ Peter Pan.” For Clarence has a profound contempt for Peter Pan. Peter Pan never grew up; Clarence grew up in v a night. The story of Clarence Kehr is an amazing one, says a Sunday Chronicle correspondent. He is now six years old and he has all the physical characteristics of d man of 19. He is an inverted Peter Pan. Haw it all happened nobody knows, least of all Clarence’s parents. Doctors and professors have examined him. have marvelled at his muscular development, his mannish whiskers, and his deep voice, and have murmured theories about glands and hormones. But they have not explained it. Until he was three years of age Clarence was apparently normal. Then he grew up, practically overnight. One night, just after his third birthday, his parents, according to their story, tucked him up in his little pink and white cot, kissed him good-night, and left him sleeping soundly They never saw their baby again, for when he awakened next morning young Clarence had changed beyond belief. The boy’s voice had become a husky baritone, his body had begun to take on a mature appearance, and in a surprisingly short time he began to display all sorts of adult characteristics. Toledo prides itself on possessing a fair share of the American quality of the ability to hustle. But no one in Toledo has ever bustled as young Kehr did, for in the three years that have passed since his third birthday he has become the complete man. He smokes strong cigars. He wears man’s clothes. If he did not shave every day he would soon possess a luxuriant beard. What is going to happen to Clarence no one knows. The State education authorities are baffled. They say they cannot allow him to attend the classes of children of his own age, and there are no alternative courses that seem to fit his mature mentality. But Clarence does not care. He is delighted to be grown-up. Having got over all troubles of childhood and adolescence in so brief a time fills him with constant glee. “If I do not make good on the stage,” he said the other day, “ I guess I shall run for President. With all this start of the other guys I ought to do well.”