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 acknowledges; 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 context 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 implies 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, gallops, etc., 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 bestial 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 at which his concerts were given were Baltimore and the upper Virginia towns.  I heard him sometime in 1860.  He remained a week or two in the town, playing every night.