ll traces of power or purity,--palsied the brain, brutalized
the nature. Tom apparently fared no better than his fellows.

It was not until 1857 that those phenomenal powers latent in the boy
were suddenly developed, which stamped him the anomaly he is to-day.

One night, sometime in the summer of that year, Mr. Oliver's family were
wakened by the sound of music in the drawing-room: not only the simple
airs, but the most difficult exercises usually played by his daughters,
were repeated again and again, the touch of the musician being timid,
but singularly true and delicate. Going down, they found Tom, who had
been left asleep in the hall, seated at the piano in an ecstasy of
delight, breaking out at the end of each successful fugue into shouts of
laughter, kicking his heels and clapping his hands. This was the first
time he had touched the piano.

Naturally, Tom became a nine-days' wonder on the plantation. He was
brought in as an after-dinner's amusement; visitors asked for him as the
show of the place. There was hardly a conception, however, in the minds
of those who heard him, of how deep the cause for wonder lay. The
planters' wives and daughters of the neighborhood were not people
who would be apt to comprehend music as a science, or to use it as a
language; they only saw in the little negro, therefore, a remarkable
facility for repeating the airs they drummed on their pianos,--in a
different manner from theirs, it is true,--which bewildered them. They
noticed, too, that, however the child's fingers fell on the keys,
cadences followed, broken, wandering, yet of startling beauty and
pathos. The house-servants, looking in through the open doors at the
little black figure perched up before the instrument, while unknown,
wild harmony drifted through the evening air, had a better conception
of him. He was possessed; some ghost spoke through him: which is a fair
enough definition of genius for a Georgian slave to offer.

Mr. Oliver, as we said, was indulgent. Tom was allowed to have constant
access to the piano; in truth, he could not live without it; when
deprived of music now, actual physical debility followed: the gnawing
Something had found its food at last. No attempt was made, however, to
give him any scientific musical teaching; nor--I wish it distinctly
borne in mind--has he ever at any time received such instruction.

The planter began to wonder what kind of a creature this was which he
had bought, flesh an