Item - Calculating Boys

(source: NIU Libraries)

Online Full Text:	Northern Illinois University
Series:	Good News — v. 13 no. 338 — page 7
Subject / Tag:	Sketch
Part of:	Good News, v. 13, no. 338, October 24, 1896 (Issue)
Date:	October 24, 1896
First Sentence:	There is no doubt that the power for mental calculation varies to a remarkable degree in different individuals, but it is not so much in adults as in children that the difference in the development of this particular faculty is so strikingly apparent, and many remarkable instances are recorded of children in whom it has developed itself in an extraordinary manner at a very early age.
Last Sentence:	Being endowed by nature with such extraordinary abilities, one naturally looks for some great mathematical work; or some startling discovery with regard to numbers, from these youths in after life, but in vain, for not one of them, with the exception of George Bidder, ever seems to have attained to anything of importance, or to have struck out any particular line for himself out of the ordinary beaten track; but rather, as time went on, they appear to have lost most of their marvelous power, or to have died before reaching an age when its practical application might have been made to serve some useful purpose.