he fact that precocity gives no assurance
of adult brightness, for it can be urged that John Stuart Mill read
Greek when four years of age.

"The child is strumous, however, and may die young. His exhibitors, who
are coining him into money, should seek the best medical care for him
and avoid surcharging his memory with rubbish. Proper cultivation of
his special senses, especially the tactile, by competent teachers, will
give Oscar the best chance of developing intellectually and acquiring
an education in the proper sense of the word."

By long custom many men of letters have developed wonderful feats of
memory; and among illiterate persons, by means of points of
association, the power of memory has been little short of marvelous. At
a large hotel in Saratoga there was at one time a negro whose duty was
to take charge of the hats and coats of the guests as they entered the
dining-room and return to each his hat after the meal. It was said
that, without checks or the assistance of the owners, he invariably
returned the right articles to the right persons on request, and no
matter how large the crowd, his limit of memory never seemed to be
reached. Many persons have seen expert players at draughts and chess
who, blindfolded, could carry on numerous games with many competitors
and win most of the matches. To realize what a wonderful feat of memory
this performance is, one need only see the absolute exhaustion of one
of these men after a match. In whist, some experts have been able to
detail the succession of the play of the cards so many hands back that
their competitors had long since forgotten it.

There is reported to be in Johnson County, Missouri, a mathematical
wonder by the name of Rube Fields. At the present day he is between
forty and fifty years of age, and his external appearance indicates
poverty as well as indifference. His temperament is most sluggish; he
rarely speaks unless spoken to, and his replies are erratic.

The boyhood of this strange character was that of an overgrown country
lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and would not go
to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so he "would have
become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless fellow, left to his
own devices, he performed some wonderful feats, and among the many
stories connected with this period of his life is one which describes
how he actually ate up a good-sized patch of sugar cane, simply because
he found i