eem to disturb him; but his ear catches every harmony, and
his whole being seems entranced and controlled by it. Let
him stand with his back to a piano, and any number of chords
be struck, and he will instantly tell every note sounded,
showing that he has been able to discriminate, and his
memory to retain distinctly and perfectly, each sound. The
phrenologists say that memory is in proportion to clearness
and strength of the impression produced at first; and this
must be the case with him. From two years old this
remarkable power of sound over him has been noticed. He has
been blind from birth; and it would seem here, as often
observed before, that, by a compensative law of our being,
in proportion as one sense is defective, the expenditure of
vital energy thus saved is absorbed by some other sense.
Probably all our sensations are the result of vibrations;
and the pulsations of light that usually enter and give all
their exquisite pleasure through the eye-ball are in his
case compensated for by the pulsations of sound, which
strike on an ear possessed of nerves of double delicacy and
vital energy from the absorption and concentration of two
senses in one.

"'Blind Tom' is not, however, the senseless being that most
imagine him, but rather like one completely guided and
governed by this one sense alone. As a lad, the song of a
bird would lead him to wander off into the woods; and then
the sound of the flute would bring him to those who went in
search of him....

"Perhaps a proper study of the case of this lad might show
to what extent all (though in less degree) might be educated
through music. It is certainly this alone that can be most
easily developed. Probably the highest and best emotions
might be thus permanently excited within him; while the
desire for those pleasures leads him to put forth
intellectual efforts that nothing else can.... But his
performances in music show how the highest results of art
and study are most easily reached by this lad in his
one-sided culture and development,--that of the ear alone.
It is with him a sort of inspiration. The science of music
he will probably never be able to master; but we must
remember that the art of it preceded the science in Egypt,
in Palestine, in Greece, and in