﻿300 PICTORIAL MISCELLANY. 



ment. When he was three years of age he could compute the time 

 by the clock. 



About this time he was sent to school. His teachers were puz- 

 zled. They had never seen such a boy to learn. One Tuesday 

 morning they placed Adams' New Arithmetic in his hands, and by 

 Friday evening he had completed all the sums it contained ! Such 

 ciphering as this by a child was truly wonderful, and his teachers 

 could only look on and wonder what it meant. 



One day, when in the sixth year of his age, he said to his 

 mother 



" Mother ! if I knew how many rods it is round our meadow, 

 (his father was a farmer,) I could tell you its circumference in bar- 

 ley-corns. 



His mother not knowing the size of the field, he waited until 

 his father came in, to whom he made the same remark. His fathe~ 

 replied by saying : 



" The field contains 1,040 rods." 



The boy thought a few minutes, and without using a slate or pencil 

 of any kind, answered 



" Then its circumference is 617,760 barley-corns ! " 



You will certainly think this a wonderful act in a little feeble boy 

 of six years old. 



Before Henry was nine years of age, he could multiply four figures 

 by four figures in his mind, as rapidly as it could be done on the slate 

 by a good arithmetician. When he was nine, he could equal the cele- 

 brated ZERAH COLBURN'S greatest feat, which was to multiply five 

 figures by five figures mentally. 



Among his recreations about this time, was that of surveying his 

 father's farm, which he did accurately, aided only by his younger 

 sister. 



Nor was his power to acquire confined to mathematics alone. His 

 mind grasped all kinds of knowledge with scarcely any effort. He 

 seemed to see through every subject to which he directed his at- 

 tention. Hence he took great delight in a copy of" Gregory's Diction- 

 ary of the Arts and Sciences " which was obtained for him. He 

 soon mastered its topics, and acquired from it that taste for the higher 

 mathematics which has made him so distinguished. 



