t good to his taste.

Yet from this clouded, illiterate mind a wonderful mathematical gift
shines. Just when he began to assert his powers is not known; but his
feats have been remembered for twenty years by his neighbors. A report
says:--

"Give Rube Fields the distance by rail between any two points, and the
dimensions of a car-wheel, and almost as soon as the statement has left
your lips he will tell you the number of revolutions the wheel will
make in traveling over the track. Call four or five or any number of
columns of figures down a page, and when you have reached the bottom he
will announce the sum. Given the number of yards or pounds of articles
and the price, and at once he will return the total cost--and this he
will do all day long, without apparent effort or fatigue.

"A gentleman relates an instance of Fields' knowledge of figures.
After having called several columns of figures for addition, he went
back to the first column, saying that it was wrong, and repeating it,
purposely miscalling the next to the last figure. At once Fields threw
up his hand, exclaiming: 'You didn't call it that way before.'

"Fields' answers come quick and sharp, seemingly by intuition.
Calculations which would require hours to perform are made in less time
than it takes to state the question. The size of the computations seems
to offer no bar to their rapid solution, and answers in which long
lines of figures are reeled off come with perfect ease. In watching the
effort put forth in reaching an answer, there would seem to be some
process going on in the mind, and an incoherent mumbling is often
indulged in, but it is highly probable that Fields does not himself
know how he derives his answers. Certain it is that he is unable to
explain the process, nor has any one ever been able to draw from him
anything concerning it. Almost the only thing he knows about the power
is that he possesses it, and, while he is not altogether averse to
receiving money for his work, he has steadily refused to allow himself
to be exhibited." In reviewing the peculiar endowment of Fields, the
Chicago Record says:--

"How this feat is performed is as much a mystery as the process by
which he solves a problem in arithmetic. He answers no questions. Rapid
mathematicians, men of study, who by intense application and short
methods have become expert, have sought to probe these two mysteries,
but without results. Indeed, the man's intelligence is of so