overlooking him scarcely crediting the fact of his really being unable
to tell one letter from the other; for he repeated the letterpress
_verbatim_, from beginning to end. This feat has been repeatedly
witnessed before he had reached his third year. To all the friends of
Mr. Smith in after-life, this circumstance is easily credible: for the
quickness of his memory was equalled by its tenacity, and both appeared
to us almost unequalled. When three years old, he read with the greatest
facility all such books as are usually put into the hands of children;
and his delight was to _act_, in the evening, the fable which he had
read in the morning--and a reader insatiate he even then appeared to be.
Between his third and sixth year, he had read, _effectually_, many books
of history, especially those of Greece, Rome, England, and France;
acquiring with facility what he retained with the utmost fidelity. He
seems to have been, at this time, conscious of possessing a strong
memory, and pleased at testing it. When not five years old, he one day
put the parts of a dissected map, consisting of a hundred pieces, into
his father's pocket, and then called for them again one by one, without
having made a single mistake, till he had finished putting them together
on the carpet. At this early period, also, he displayed another
first-rate mental quality, namely, the power of abstraction--one by
which he was eminently distinguished throughout his subsequent life.
When a very young child, he was frequently observed exercising this rare
power--lost to all around him, and evidently intent upon some one
object, to the exclusion of all others. Thus, for instance, he would
often be occupied with a play of Shakspeare, while sitting in the corner
of the drawing-room, in which were many persons engaged in conversation,
or otherwise doing what would have effectually interrupted one who was
not similarly endowed with himself. One of his brothers often played at
chess with him, with closed folding doors between them, the former
moving the chess-men for both, and the latter calling out the moves,