fic precision of his
manner of touch. For example, in a progression of augmented chords, his
mode of fingering is invariably that of the schools, not that which
would seem most natural to a blind child never taught to place a finger.
Even when seated with his back to the piano, and made to play in that
position, (a favorite feat in his concerts,) the touch is always
scientifically accurate.

The peculiar power which Tom possesses, however, is one which requires
no scientific knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate.
Placed at the instrument with any musician, he plays a perfect bass
accompaniment to the treble of music _heard for the first time as
he plays_. Then taking the seat vacated by the other performer, he
instantly gives the entire piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not
a note lost or misplaced. The selections of music by which this power
of Tom's was tested, two years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen
pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition at the White House,
after a long concert, he was tried with two pieces,--one thirteen, the
other twenty pages long, and was successful.

We know of no parallel case to this in musical history. Grimm tells us,
as one of the most remarkable manifestations of Mozart's infant genius,
that at the age of nine he was required to give an accompaniment to an
aria which he had never heard before, and without notes. There were
false accords in the first attempt, he acknowledges; but the second was
pure. When the music to which Tom plays _secondo_ is strictly classical,
he sometimes balks for an instant in passages; to do otherwise would
argue a creative power equal to that of the master composers; but when
any chordant harmony runs through it, (on which the glowing negro soul
can seize, you know,) there are no "false accords," as with the infant
Mozart. I wish to draw especial attention to this power of the boy, not
only because it is, so far as I know, unmatched in the development of
any musical talent, but because, considered in the context of his
entire intellectual structure, it involves a curious problem. The mere
repetition of music heard but once, even when, as in Tom's case, it
is given with such incredible fidelity, and after the lapse of years,
demands only a command of mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of
the power of memory; but to play _secondo_ to music never heard or seen
implies the comprehension of the full drift of the symp