Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/119

Rh shook his head, and placed it with the column horizontal. While perusing the paper, he would stop occasionally, lean back in his chair, and laugh, as if much amused at the matter. That he gathered some peculiar impression of what was in the paper is plain from the fact that he would 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, pointng to the part that had interested him, would say, "Read—read!" There was another peculiarity 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 suppose that he could not see, or really read, but was simply indulging in some kind of idiotic amusement. One simple fact seems to negative 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 appeared to go through no process of calculation, but at once saw or grasped the result as by some more inward or subtile power of apprehension. His brother again and again proved the correctness of his answers, although the mathematical result that the brother obtained 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 degree 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