The morning journal-courier., 1908-08-15
KNEW "BLIND TOM" Henry Watterson's Tribute to Famous Negro Piano
 Artist. HIS OLDEST LIVING FRIEND First Heard of Him Through Robert Heller, Once n Wcll-Known
 Magician.
HIS OLDEST LIVING FRIEND

Tldings of the death of Blind Tom" at Hoboken, where he had been llv- ing in retirement" the wires tell us, "and subsisting on charity" reach at least one heart that loved and pitied him, and summon from the land of shades and dreams many ghost of days and dear ones long since depart cd. I must be his oldest living friend. It Is not true, as have sometimes seen 1t stated, that l taught him what little he knew of music; but l was in at the outset of his strange career and am familiar with all its beginnings, says Henry Watterson in the Courier Journal
 first heard of him through Robert Heller-William Henry Palmer-best known in his day as q popular mag- clan, but a most accomplished pianist. It was at Washington and in the au- tumn of 1860 Palmer had just come up with Blind Tom" in Louisville, l think, and had been, of course, at once perplexed and amazed by his eXtraor- dinary characteristics His crude, often grotesque, attempts to initiate whatever fell upon his ear, either vo- cally or on the keyboard. were start ling. 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 few bars. The Bethune girls, daughters of General Bethune, of Columbus, Ga, his old master. had taught him a few jIngles, which he rattled off upon the .piano. He knew nothing very complicated, or very we'll But he was blind and q clearly an idiot in short, he was a prodigy.
 Palmer. gave him several lessons that is, he played over and over for him such pieces as Thalberg's Home, Sweet Home" Mendelssohns Spring Song and the salient passages out of some of Liszt's transcriptions. Ex- cepting a few additional lessons" of this kind had later along from Eugene Baylor, who taught him his famous "Margrave Dance" Tom made little further progress and learned nothing new.
 He would spin about the piano, like a baboon, mumbling to himself while Palmer or Baylor played, and, if they stopped, he would rush -headlong to the instrument and try to follow after them precisely as they had phrased. Two or three of such lessons sufTic- ed. and though he learned nothing ac- curately, nor played with any other expression than they had rendered, what he did was surprising, even to those who knew the process and the Limitations.
 There was in the Tennessee line a certain Major Macconico, who had a great baritone voice. He taught Tom to sing Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" very much as he sang it. There was a tailor in Griffin, Ca, by the name of Hanlon, whose tenor voice was fetching, and he taught Tom two or three love ditties, which Tom repeated in rich though rather A guttural tones, yet in undoubted ten or. It was something more than a phenomenon of memory Though blind. he could handle the keyboard readily, while his vocal limitations from bass to treble, from deep bari tone to mezzo soprano, were sufii- ciently accurate and individualized to be recognized
 Tom seemed woman hater. Whether 1t was pure misogyny or a kind of shyness manifesting itself boorishly, I know not l well re- member, In Atlanta, whore a party of us had him with us off and on for two or three months, a young lady one day sat down at the piano and began to play. Tom was at the dark end of the chamber spinning upon hands and heels, and mumblng to himself. He caught the sound of the instru- ment He stood for moment still and upright Then, like a wild anil mal he made dash and swooped down upon her. Terrified, the poor girl shrieked and ran, while the rest of us held him, writhing and trem- bling with what seemed to be rage,
 "She stole my harmonies,' he cried over and over; "she stole my harmo- nies." and never again did he allow her to come near him. If she were even in the room he knew it somehow and became restive and angry.
 Tn the autumn of 1865 Tom reap peared at the North under the man. apement of his old masters family, quite impoverished by the war and an attempt was made to "liberate' him from what some mistaken and overzealous humanltarians called his 'enslavement." Happily, this failed The case showed for itself, and Tom was left with those who had cared for him from his babyhood, had been most kind to him, and knew, as none others could, his real wants and net ds.
 The notion that the Betn,nes had a gold mine In his performances Was not true. They made at the height of his popularity hardly much more than a living, and I suppose that eventually this failed them. They must be all of them dead now. How Tom came to live in want at Hoboken, inst how he was separated from his old friends, and how he dropped out of public no- tice, cannot say. His mother was alive as late as the early sos; but doubt if she, or any of the Bethune family survive.
 The last time I saw l}lind Tom was in London away back in 1866. Gen. Pinkney Howard and one of the Bethune boys had brought him over. It had been then nearly three years since l had been with him in Atlanta. From the beginning of our intimacy