In music, this boy of twelve years, 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 that of 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, etc.:  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 daemon in Tom, was 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 favorite 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.