WAS RE AN' IDIOT? iii 



shook his head, and placed it with the column horizontal. "While pe- 

 rusing the paper, he would stop occasionally, lean back in his chair, and 

 laugh, as if much amused at the matter. That he gathered some pe- 

 culiar impression of what was in the paper is plain from the fact that 

 he Avould be greatly interested in some part, and carefully lay the 

 paper away till his sister came to visit them at the old home, when he 

 would eagerly go and get it, and, poinitng to the part that had in- 

 terested him, would say, " Read — read ! " There was another pe- 

 culiarity about his reading. He would begin to read when it was 

 growing dark, and continue till hardly anything was distinguishable 

 to others in the room. At first thought, one would naturally sup- 

 pose that he could not see, or really read, but was simply indulging 

 in some kind of idiotic amusement. One simple fact seems to nega- 

 tive such a conclusion. He kept old papers filed away in the garret, 

 hundreds of them in different piles. If, by chance, an article happened 

 to be spoken of by the family in conversation as having been in some 

 paper six months or a year before, and the desire expressed to see it 

 again, this man would go to the garret, and from a pile of a hundred, 

 in total darkness, select the one containing the article mentioned, 

 and bring it down to the family to read. This he did again and 

 again, yet he could not read a single word as others commonly read. 



The mathematical powers of this man were really wonderful in 

 certain directions. Without a moment's seeming thought he would 

 tell the dominical letter for any year past or future that might be 

 named. There seemed no limit to his power in this one line. He ap- 

 peared to go through no process of calculation, but at once saw or 

 grasped the result as by some more inward or subtile power of ap- 

 prehension. His brother again and again proved the correctness of 

 his answers, although the mathematical result that the brother ob- 

 tained by a half-hour's " figuring " this seeming idiot attained in a 

 moment. Strangers coming to the house would oft-times tell him 

 their age, the day and month of their birth. He would immediately 

 tell them the day of the week they were born, also the day of the 

 week their birthday would fall upon in any year to come. The day 

 of the week that Christmas or fourth of July would come in any 

 year they would mention, he would tell without a moment's apparent 

 calculation, and yet he could not count, or reckon in the ordinary 

 way, more than a child of three years old ! His particular literary 

 preference seemed to be for almanacs, often having three or four 

 about him, which he apparently studied and compared. When it 

 came near the end of the year, he was anxious and urgent to get the 

 new year's almanac. 



There was one peculiar performance that betokened a certain de- 

 gree of musical taste and apprehension. He would sit for hours, with 

 a board two or three feet long resting on his knees, and rub ribbon- 

 blocks over it in various ways, producing different sounds, not alto- 



