Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 September 1893 — A Negro Prodigy. [ARTICLE]

A Negro Prodigy.

Pittsburg Dispatch. Barnwell County, S. C., possesses a negro boy, 12 years of age, who is, looked on as the owner of the most remarkable memory of which the world has any record. He committed the entire book of Genesis to memory the other day in the space o f three hours, repeating every chapter after redding once, and forgetting only some half dozen words from the first verse to the last. Some weeks ago a local politician delivered a speech of nearly two hours at a county meeting, and on returning home the boy was able to tell the discourse over with such accuracy that the following day the man who delivered it went to see him to take a copy, of it from his mouth, having himself iost the manuscript on which it was written. This gift seems unaccompanied by an unusual degree of intelligence, the boy being a day laborer in the fields, and he appears not to take in the sense of what the camera of his mind preserves but to repeat it after the manner of a parrot. His mother says that he has possessed this faculty since a baby, and at the extraordinary age of one year he could repeat any conversation that took place in his presence, irrespective of its length or purpose. He does not know how to read or write, but has frequently given exhibitions of being able to correctly copy out any sheet of writing he has read over once, giving every punctuation mark and flourish, and imitating the handwriting with startling accuracy,and this for several pages of ordinary letter paper

They call them selling races because a big majority of those who take a chance at the pool-box are sold.