Springfield Weekly Republican

Correspondence of the Boston Journal.

Genius Against Life.—We have from Montrose, Scotland, another painful example of what the old Dutchman called "te schwort ish too schaip for te schayepart." Alexander Miller, of that town, well known by the name of "The calculating Boy," recently died at the premature age of 16 years. His wonderful powers of mental calculation gained for him the latter name while he was quite a child, and when under ordinary circumstances, he would not have been expected to have got farther on with his arithmetical education than the simple elements. But at that time he could, with the utmost ease, and with wonderful rapidity and correctness, solve very abstruse and difficult questions of calculation, seldom, if ever, making a mistake, and doing it solely by mental effort. For a marble or other small remuneration, he would then, in a few seconds, tell a person how many seconds he had lived, only requiring the date of year and month, and never failing to make due allowance for leap years. It is needless to say that his powers were often tested. At school he out-distanced his fellows, as might be expected, in arithmetic; but he also kept up well in other departments of education. He latterly became a great collector of old postage stamps, and so retentive was his memory and quick his perception, that, had he been asked at what post-office a stamp had been obliterated, he at once correctly answered after looking at the number on the obliterating mark. Within the past month his bodily health has declined but to the last his mental powers retained their full strength. He was a native of Auchmithie; his father, we believe, being a fisherman.