ustle through the school, boys winking and giving knowing looks
one to another.] I dare say he could now sing or whistle a hundred tunes
from memory. [More knowing looks.] Possibly he may never make a very
accurate performer, on account of the very ease with which he picks up a
tune. He learns a tune so easily by the ear, that he will not submit to
the drudgery of studying it scientifically."

"You think, then, Professor, that the boy has decided indications of
musical talent?"

"Undoubtedly. He has musical talents of a very high order [suppressed
shouts] amounting almost to genius!"

The fact was, poor Charlie was the butt of the whole school, on account
of his utter inability to learn the first elements of either the art or
the science of music. He could neither sing, whistle, nor play. He could
hardly tell "Old Hundred" from "Yankee Doodle." Although he had been
taking music-lessons for two years, he could not rise and fall through
the eight notes, to save his neck. His attempts to do so were a sort of
indiscriminate goo, goo, goo, like that of an infant; and the excitement
among the boys, which the Professor had mistaken for applause and
admiration, grew out of their astonishment. They were simply laughing at
him.

_Boy No. 3_ was a youth over fourteen years old, regularly and
symmetrically formed in face, features, and person. There was nothing in
his make or bearing to indicate any marked peculiarity. Yet he had a
peculiarity as marked as that of the preceding. He was singularly
deficient in the capacity for mathematical studies. He was studying
English grammar, geography, and Latin, and got along in these branches
about as well as the majority of his class. But when it came to the
science of numbers, he seemed to stick fast. Neither I nor any of my
teachers had been able to get him beyond Long Division. It was as clear
a case as I have ever known of natural deficiency in that department of
the mental constitution. Yet this boy was declared by the manipulator to
have a decided talent for mathematics.

_Boy No. 4_ was my crack mathematician. He was really in mathematics
what our manipulator had made out No. 2 to be in music. His quickness in
the perception of mathematical truth was wonderful. Besides this natural
readiness in everything pertaining to the science of quantity and the
relations of numbers, he had received a good mathematical training, and
he was in this department far in advance of his years. Whe