despite the fact that he could neither read nor write. Once acquainted
with the power of numbers, he commenced his education by counting the
hairs of the tail of the horse with which he worked the fields. He
soon devised processes for shortening his modes of calculation,
attaining such skill and accuracy as to solve the most difficult
problems. Depending upon his own system of mental arithmetic he
learned to obtain accurate results just as quickly as Mr. Zerah
Colburn, a noted calculator of that day, who tested the Negro
mathematician.[1] The most abstruse questions in relation to time,
distance, and space were no task for his miraculous memory, which,
when the mathematician was interrupted in the midst of a long and
tedious calculation, enabled him to take up some other work and later
resume his calculation where he left off.[2] One of the questions
propounded him, was how many seconds of time had elapsed since the
birth of an individual who had lived seventy years, seven months, and
as many days. Fuller was able to answer the question in a minute and a
half.

[Footnote 1: Baldwin, _Observations_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: Needles, _An Historical Memoir_, etc., p. 32.]

Another Negro of this type was James Durham, a native slave of the
city of Philadelphia. Durham was purchased by Dr. Dove, a physician
in New Orleans, who, seeing the divine spark in the slave, gave him
a chance for mental development. It was fortunate that he was thrown
upon his own resources in this environment, where the miscegenation
of the races since the early French settlement, had given rise to a
thrifty and progressive class of mixed breeds, many of whom at that
time had the privileges and immunities of freemen. Durham was not long