But feeling that every colored boy and girl should be justly proud of Blind Tom’s record, I will give some words from the book of Hon. James M. Trotter, himself a colored man. His book is called “Music and Some Highly Musical People.” He says:
“Blind Tom is unquestionably the most wonderful musician the world has ever known. He is an absolute master in the comprehension and retention of all sound. You may sit down to the pianoforte and strike any note or chord or discord, or a great number of them, and he will at once give their proper names, and, taking your place, reproduce them. Complete master of the pianoforte keyboard, he calls to his melodious uses, with most consummate ease, all of its resources that are known to skillful performers, as well as constantly discovers and applies those that are new. Under his magnetic touch this instrument may become, at his will, a music box, a hand organ, a harp, or a bagpipe, a “Scotch fiddle,” a church organ, a guitar, or a banjo; it may imitate the “stump speaker” as he delivers his glowing harangue; or, being brought back to its legitimate tones, it may be made to sing two melodies at once, while the performer, with his voice, delivers a third, all three in different time and keys, all in perfect tune and time, and each one easily distinguishable from the other! He remembers and plays fully seven thousand pieces. Some persons, it is true, have had the temerity to say that Blind Tom is an idiot. Out with the idea! Who ever heard of an idiot possessing such power of memory, such fineness of musical sensibility, such order, such method, as he displays? Let us call him the embodiment of music, the soul of music, and there let our investigations rest, for all else is vain speculation. No one lives, or, so far as we know, has ever lived, that can at all be compared with him.”
Susan and Mamie and Lillian and Marjorie were always close friends. They usually went together and played together and it was very unusual to see one of them without the others. At school they always made it a rule to lunch together and play together. One day at recess they were standing in a little group all by themselves when Frances joined them.
“What are you talking about, girls?” asked Frances in cheerful tones.