Arizona republican., 1895-07-20
A MUSICAL MARVEL.
Blind Tom, the Pianist, and His
 Wonderful Talent.
The Discovery of His Remarkable Gift and Its Development-Eccentr of the Sightless Master of
 the Piano.


 slave boy known as Blind Tom" has aroused much public curiosity as to the disappearance of Tom from view. The best information I have been able to obtain is that he is passing the closing days of his life in a lunatic asylum, his vagaries having taken on too dangerous a form to admit of his going freely about as heretofore. f r.'-
 Tom was born in Muscogee county, Ga, says writer in Kate Fields Washington. His fathers name was Mingo, and his mother was called by her owner Aunt Charity. While he was still a boy, and supposed to be mere idiot as well as sightless, he used to conceal himself in his masters house, and after midnight creep into the par lors and play the same airs with which his young mistress had enter tained her guests a few hours before, being cautious to suppress his notes by holding his foot on the soft pedal. He was soon detected, however, and repri- handed. A milder view was taken of his shortcomings when his master dis covered that the boys gift might be turned to profitable account; mean while, the children of the household, delighted with his marvellous powers, had not hesitated to defy the discipline of their elders and encourage him to play for them on the sly.
 Besides being remarkable player of other peoples music, Tom was a com poser himself. He was near enough to one of the battlefelds of the civil war to catch the sounds from it, and these he wove into a piece which his mana ger entitled, for popular effect ''The Battle of Manassas" In it the piano is made to initiate the music of the flies and drums, the charges of the cavalry, the thunders of battery, the groans of the wounded and dying, and all the incidents of a great fight SO faithfully as to call up panorama of the scene before the minds eye of the listener.
 One of the feats which Tom was ac- customed to perform in public to the amazement of his audiences was the imitation of any piece of music per formed in his hearing by a stranger. Some of these pieces made so great an impression on him that he carried them in his mind for long period and then could reproduce them at will A story which seems somewhat apocryphal was told me by teacher of music in a young ladies' seminary in Maryland, representing Tom as having carried in his memory for twenty-one years, note for note, a German waltz which had been played before him by my inform ant order to test his ability.and which, as far as known, he never attempted again during all that period When I suggested that there was a possibility of Toms having heard the same piece played by other hands in the interval and thus kept his memory refreshed. the professor assured me that this could not be so, because before playing it to Tom he had rewritten the waltz, adapt ing it from it's original German form to one which contained a number of varia- tlons and fancy touches of his own. Tom reproduced all these incidentals with absolute faithfulness. !
 The theory that Tom must be of a i gentle disposition because so given to music would be very misleading. Sound, rather than harmony, was what ap- pealed to his intellect, such as it was. and his reproductions were governed | by the rules of accuracy rather than | inspired by artistic genius It used to be said of him that the crying of a child afforded him l,een da1irh+ and | when he could not draw forth as much 1 sound as he wanted from his young companions by ordinary processes, he would bite and pinch them for the pur- pose of hearing their shrieks of pain. As he u1atured he developed power ful bone frame and great muscular strength, which he exerted to the se- rious discontinue of anybody who op-