me and continued for years exceedingly rough
and harsh, though it did not affect the taste or correctness
of his singing.

"He was a little less than four years of age when a piano
was brought to the house. The first note that was sounded,
of course, brought him up. He was permitted to indulge his
curiosity by running his fingers over and smelling the keys,
and was then taken out of the parlor. As long as any one was
playing, he was contented to stay in the yard, and dance and
caper to the music; but the moment it ceased, having
discovered whence the sounds proceeded, and how they were
produced, he was anxious to get to the instrument to
continue them. One night the parlor and the piano had been
left open: his mother had neglected to fasten her door, and
he had escaped without her knowledge. Before day the young
ladies awoke, and, to their astonishment, heard Tom playing
one of their pieces. He continued to play until the family
at the usual time arose, and gathered around him to witness
and wonder at his performance, which, though necessarily
very imperfect, was marvellously strange; for,
notwithstanding this was his first known effort at a tune,
he played with both hands, and used the black as well as the
white keys.

"After a while he was allowed free access to the piano, and
commenced playing every thing he heard. He soon mastered
all of that, and commenced composing for himself. He would
sit at the piano for hours, playing over the pieces he had
heard; then go out, and run and jump about the yard a little
while, and come back and play something of his own. Asked
what it was, he replied, 'It is what the wind said to me;'
or, 'What the birds said to me;' or, 'What the trees said to
me;' or what something else said to him. No doubt what he
was playing was connected in his mind with some sound, or
combination of sounds, proceeding from those things; and not
unfrequently the representation was so good as to render the
similarity clear to others.

"There was but one thing which seemed to give Tom as much
pleasure as the sound of the piano. Between a wing and the
body of the dwelling there is a hall, on the roof of which
the rain falls from the roof of the dwelling, and runs
thence down a gutter. There is, in the combin