[texhax] plain tex vbox question

[jw]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 7:22 AM, William Adams <will.adams at frycomm.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe this link will help?
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=HJ7sumWcwX8C&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=tex+vbox+vtop&source=web&ots=bM3Az-j5S6&sig=c1Z6JNZqj7cjyJd7uNC1hMBAbhM&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result
>
> There's also _TeX for the Impatient_ which is wholly freely available:
>
> http://www.tug.org/ftp/tex/impatient/book.pdf
>
> William
>

Thanks for the links, I hadn't seen them before.
In general, I understand the idea of boxes.
It seems to me that the only difference between my two examples is
that one starts out in 'vertical' mode and the other is in 'internal
vertical'.
But why the text would be positioned lower in vertical mode still eludes me...

-John