expression. His voice, however, is discordant,
and of small compass.

In music, this boy of twelve years old, born
blind, utterly ignorant of a note, ignorant of
every phase of so-called musical science, interprets
severely classical composers with a
clearness of conception in which he excels,
and a skill in mechanism equal to our second-rate
artists. His concerts usually include any
themes selected by the audience, from the higher
grades of Italian or German opera. His comprehension
of the meaning of music, as a prophetic
or historical voice which few souls utter,
and fewer understand, is clear and vivid: he
renders it thus, with whatever mastery of the
mere material part he may possess, fingering,
dramatic effects, and so forth; these are but
means to him, not an end, as with most artists.
One could fancy that Tom was never traitor to
the intent or soul of the theme. What God or
the Devil meant to say by this or that harmony,
what the soul of one man cried aloud to another
in it, this boy knows, and is to that a faithful
witness. His deaf uninstructed soul has never
been tampered with by art-critics who know the
body well enough of music, but nothing of the
living creature within. The world is full of
these, vulgar souls that palter with eternal Nature
and the eternal Arts, blind to the Word
who dwells among us therein. Tom, or the
demon in Tom, is not one of them.

With regard to his command of the instrument,
two points have been especially noted by
musicians: the unusual frequency of occurrence
of tours de force in his playing, and the scientific
precision of his manner of touch. For
example, in a progression of augmented chords,
his mode of fingering is invariably that of the
schools: not that which would seem most natural
to a blind child, never taught to place a
finger. Even when seated with his " back to
the piano," and made to play in that position (a
favourite feat in his concerts), the touch is
always scientifically accurate.

The peculiar power which Tom possesses,
however, is one which requires no scientific
knowledge of music in his audiences to appreciate.
Placed at the instrument with any musician,
he plays a perfect bass accompaniment
to the treble of music heard for the first time as
he plays. Then, taking the seat vacated by the
other performer, he instantly gives the entire
piece, intact in brilliancy and symmetry, not a
note lost or misplaced. The selections of music
by which this power of Tom's was tested, two
years ago, were sometimes fourteen and sixteen
pages in length; on one occasion, at an exhibition
at the White House, after a long concert,
he was tried with two pieces; one, thirteen;
the other, twenty pages long; and was successful.

We know of no parallel case to this in musical
history. Grimm tells us, as one of the most
remarkable manifestations of Mozart's infant
genius, that at the age of nine he was required
to give an accompaniment to an aria which
he had never heard before, and without notes.
There were false accords in the first attempt, he
acknowledged; but the second was pure. When
the music to which Tom plays secondo is strictly
classical, he sometimes balks for an instant in
passages; to do otherwise would argue a creative
power equal to that of the master composers;
but when any chordant harmony runs
through it (on which the glowing negro soul
can seize, you know), there are no "false accords,"
as with the infant Mozart. I wish to
draw especial attention to this power of the
boy, not only because it is, so far as I know,
unmatched in the development of any musical
talent, but because, considered in the contest of
his entire intellectual structure, it involves a
curious problem. The mere repetition of music
heard but once, even when, as in Tom's case, it
is given with such incredible fidelity, and after
the lapse of years, demands only a command of
mechanical skill, and an abnormal condition of
the power of memory; but to play secondo to
music never heard or seen, infers the comprehension
of the full drift of the symphony in
its current,— a capacity to create, in short. Yet
such attempts as Tom has made to dictate music
for publication do not sustain any such inference.
They are only a few light marches,
galops, and the like, simple and plaintive enough,
but with easily detected traces of remembered
harmonies. Very different from the strange,
weird improvisations of every day; one would
fancy that the mere attempt to bring this mysterious
genius within him in bodily presence
before the outer world, woke, too, the idiotic
nature to utter its reproachful, unable cry. Nor
is this the only bar by which poor Tom's soul is
put in mind of its foul prison. After any too
prolonged effort, such as those I have alluded
to, his whole bodily frame gives way, and a
complete exhaustion of the brain follows, accompanied
with epileptic spasms. The trial at
the White House, mentioned before, was successful,
but was followed by days of illness.

Being a slave, Tom never was taken into a Free
State; for the same reason his master refused
advantageous offers from European managers.
The highest points North in which his concerts
were given, were Baltimore and the upper
Virginia towns. I heard him some time in 1860.
He remained a week or two in the town, playing
every night. The concerts were unique enough.
They were given in a great barn of a room,
gaudy with hot soot, stained frescoes, chandeliers,
and walls splotched with gilt. The audience was
large, always; such as a provincial town affords.
Not the purest bench of musical criticism before
which to bring poor Tom! Beaux and belles,
siftings of old country families, whose grandfathers
trapped and traded and married with
the Indians, the savage thickening of whose
blood told itself in high cheek-bones, flashing
jewellery, champagne-bibbing, a comprehension
of the tom-tom music of schottisches and polkas;
money-made men and their wives, cooped up by
respectability; taking concerts when they were
given in town, taking the White Sulphur or
Cape May in summer, taking beef for dinner,