The Middlebury Register And Addison County Journal

A Mathematical Prodigy.

Near Owingsville, Ky., there resides a man who is indeed a prodigy. The name of this wonderful man is Reuben Fields, and he has but one developed faculty, this one seeming to take entire possession of him, driving all other thoughts from his mind. In early infancy he was apparently much as other children, but in extreme youth he developed a wonderful precocity, or, rather, a supernatural endowment for mathematics, even then solving difficult problems with apparent ease and with but little study. This being came a mania with him, and grew as he grew, to the exclusion of all other branches of thought, until finally, without knowing a single figure or letter of the alphabet he became the perfect master of the science of mathematics. He has been tested by the most scientific men of this profession, and the answers to the most difficult problems that they have been able to propound are at his finger's end, the invariably correct solution being given in an instant, quicker than thought.

As an instance of his remarkable powers, he has been known to keep more than a dozen clerks busy in taking invoice of a stock of goods. Indeed, his knowledge and application of the science of mathematics far exceed anything that the most scientific men are able to comprehend. Another phenomenal characteristic of this man is that he can tell the time to a second, either day or night. Awakened from the soundest sleep he can tell you, without hesitation, precisely what time it is. What Blind Tom is to music, Reuben Fields is to mathematics: and, like that illustrious idiot, this one branch absorbs his entire mental capacity.—Cincinnati Enquirer.