The little boy was asked to write a sentence on the blackboard using the word "soul." Other children wrote statements such as, "I sold my toy," or "They sold their car." But this little boy had heard the expression of pity, "The poor old soul." And so, confusing "soul" with "sold," he wrote, "The poor old sold." Upon which, seeing the unacceptable sentence, the teacher said, "That doesn't make any sense." And so, the little boy looked like the stupidest child in class.
So, he ran home and told his parents. And, his mother told him, "That's all right, Johnny. The teacher just never heard of the poor old soul. You see, you say 'sold' when you have sold something, but 'soul' in this case means the poor person you have seen."
"Oh, I get it," said Johnny. "I thought I would look smart because no one else had ever heard of the poor old soul, but because they didn't know what I was talking about, I looked stupid."
Let us imagine that a scholar, a thousand years from now, unearths a manuscript that tells about the experience of the little boy, but with no context. The words simply appear, "The poor old sold."
Realizing that "poor" is an adjective that modifies a noun, the scholar says: "Well, it may have been a poor man, a poor woman, a poor boy or a poor girl. But, since I don't know what the noun was, I'm going to render it 'poor person' and let it go at that." And so the scholar writes: "The poor old [person] sold."
Unavoidably, the question would arise: "Sold what?" What was it that the poor old sold? It could be anything. So, the wise scholar writes: "The poor old [person] sold [something]."
And finally, in what sense was the old poor? Financially, or in some other way? It may have been a lonely person who was emotionally deprived. And how were they old? Were they getting up in years, or were they quite mature? The former seems more likely than the latter.
So the scholar finally writes, "The (financially or otherwise) poor, advancing in age [person] sold [something]."
And so, the little boy came to tax the scholar's mind in the best of ways. After the scholar sold his find to the Ancient Artifacts Association, an associate said to him: "See here, Perkins! You're an old man now. You were short on cash until you sold your translation of the manuscript; you were poor. And now you have sold your text. The little boy must have been thinking of you when he wrote, 'The poor old sold.'"
And Perkins replied, "Yes, I am the poor old who sold!"
Justin