The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-22
Henry watterson, in the Louisville
 Courier Journal

Courier Journal
 IDINGs of the death of Blind
 (OD Tom" at Hoboken. A"where he
 had been living in retirement" the wires tell us, and subsisting on char ity," reach at least one heart that loved and pitied him, and summon from the of days and dear ones long since departed. I must be his oldest living friend. It is not true, as I have sometimes seen it stated. that I taught him what little he knew of music; but 1 was in at the out set of his strange career and am familiar with all it's beginnings.
 I first heard of him through Robert Heller-William Henry Palmer-best known in his day as popular magician, but a most accomplished pianist. It was at Washington and in the autumn of 1s6O Palmer had just come up with "Blind Tom in Louisville, I think, and had been, of course, and at once perplexed and amazed by his extraordinary charac- teristics. His crude, often grotesque. at tempts to initiate whatever fell upon his ear, either vocally or on the keyboard, were startling. He had heard Judge Douglas speak and graphically reproduced a few sentences. He had heard reign ing prima donna sing and repeated her soprano in a few bars. The Bethune girls, daughters of General Bethune of Colum- bus, Ga., his old master had taught him a few jingles, which he rattled off upon the piano. He knew nothing very com plicated, or very well. But he was blind and clearly an idiot; in short, he was a | prodigy.
 | that is, he played over and over for him 1 such pieces as Thalberg's "Home, Sweet Home," Mendelssohn's Spring Song and | the salient passages out of some of Liszt s | transcriptons. Excepting a few additional | lessons of this kind had later along | from Eugene Baylor, who taught him his l famous "Margrave Danse," Tom made | little further progress and learned noth- | ing new.
 | He would spin about the piano, like a l haboon, mumbling to himself whilst Pal l mer or Baylor played, and if they stopped | he would rush headlong to the instru- ment and try to follow after them pre- 1 cisely as they had phrased. Two or three l of such lessons" sufficed, and though l he learned nothing accurately, nor played with any other expression than they had rendered, what he did was surprising, ! even to those who knew the process and the limitation.
 The notion that the Bethunes had a 1 gold mine in his performances was not l true. They made at the height of his popularity hardly much more than liv- l ing, and I suppose that eventually this 1 failed them. They must be all of them dead now. How Tom came to live in want at Hoboken, just how he was separated | from his old friends, and how he dropped | cut of public notice I cannot say His i mother was alive as late as the early sos, but I doubt if she or any of the Bethune family survive.
 J The last time I saw Blind Tom was in London. away back in 1866. Gen. Pinkney l Howard and one of the Bethune boys had
 brought him over It had been then
 
 him in Atlanta From the beginning of
 our intimacy Tom had been greatly inn
 pressed that, with maimed hand, I could still strike few chords and run an
 octave on the Keyboard. To his poor, half-hit mind it seemed miracle. Upon l a Sunday afternoon I came into the lit- tie hall on or near Leicester square. where Tom was to appear. He was back of the scenes spinning as usual hand over heel, and mumbling to himself. As we came upon the stage General Howard said, Let ! us see whether he knows you" I called him. He slowly uncoiled himself and lis
 tened. I called him again. He stood ir-
 resolute. then ran across the boards,
 seized my hand, assured himself of the
 wfthered stump and joyously called my | name.
 What was 1t? Memory? Yes, 1t was
 memory without doubt; but what else
 Whence the hand power that enabled him
 to manipulate the keys, the vocal power
 that enabled him to initiate the voice?
 When he was tot of or years old
 he strayed from the negro cabin into the
 parlor of the mansion and hid himself | whilst the children were having a con
 cert When they had gone, leaving the
 room, as they supposed, quite empty they
 heard the piano tinkle They ran back,
 and there, to their amazement. sat the l chubby little black monkey on the stool. 1 banging away for dear life, yet not with
 out sequence and rhythm, trying to re- peat what they had just been sinEina