THE YOUNG AMERICAN MATHEMATICIAN.

[From the "Boston Family Visitor," the following abridged Memoir of this wonderful boy is taken. We have supplied several easier words, and yet we have been obliged to leave many hard words unaltered. Our young readers. must ask their parents and teachers for their meaning.] TRUMAN HENRY SAFFORD, was born at Royalton, Windsor county, Vermont, on the 6th of January, 1836. He is the son of T. H. and Louisa P. Safford. His grandfather, Nathan Safford, emigrated from Preston, Connecticut, 1807,-purchased one of the most beautiful and romantic situations on White River, and built the house where young Safford was born. He is represented by those who knew him as having been somewhat eccentric, and exceedingly fond of reading and mathematics.

The parents of young Safford were both teachers of youth previous to marriage. The father has been

long and highly esteemed in the town where he has lived, having filled, we believe, every important office in its gift. He is a man of great conversational powers, and of warm social feelings. His great fondness for reading has expended itself upon none of the light trash of the day, but has drawn him into communion with literature of the highest and most improving kind.

It was discoverable from early infancy that Truman Henry, the subject of this sketch, possessed uncommon powers and ability. Almost his first efforts at speech, at nine or ten months of age, were made to ascertain the reason of things beyond his comprehension; and never would he rest satisfied unless he could, or thought he could, trace the cause and the effect. Indeed, the first dawning of intelligence showed something like thinking and reasoning beyond the ordinary capacities of infants.

Being a very feeble and delicate infant, with nerves of the most sensitive nature, every one strung with all the delicacy of an Eolian harp, an instinctive shrinking from every approach of bodily pain, it was with the greatest difficulty he was reared at all; and the remark was frequently made that not one mother in a thousand could have saved him. For many

months during his first year, he would, without any apparent disease, scream as if in agony, until past midnight, and at times until two or three o'clock in the morning. At about the age of one year, his health improved, and the readiness with which he seized the names of natural objects was a matter of astonishment to all who were acquainted with him. When once told the name of an object, it was sufficient -he did not forget it; and his next effort would be directed to its history. What is its use? why was it made? and his questions were often of a startling nature.

It was oftentimes quite difficult to find answers to satisfy such a mind. The thirst for all kinds of knowledge seemed like a fever in his blood. At the age of

twenty months, while slowly recovering from a severe attack of disease, which made him so irritable that it was impossible to get him to rest at all until past midnight, a quantity of blocks were picked up of different sizes and shapes, on which were pasted the letters of the alphabet, and in less than one month he had learned every letter so perfectly that he would distinguish each in a moment.

The first peculiar fondness for figures which his parents noticed in him, was in his third year, when he learned the names of the nine digits, and also the Roman method of computation. The first uses he made of his new acquisition were to count time on the clock, and to arrange his father's periodicals according to their numbers; and the rapidity and facility with which he did so convinced his parents that his power over numbers must be most extraordinary.

At four years of age he commenced attending a school in his father's neighbourhood, and attended some three or four weeks, but owing to the difficulty of crossing the stream, he went but little-not on an average more than six weeks in the course of a year. He did not like the common course of the schoolslearning to read and spell, as is usually practised in our country nurseries of learning, had no charms for him, and he would plead with his mother to permit him to stay at home, where he could have an opportunity to range over his father's library at pleasure. In his sixth year his mother procured for him Emerson's arithmetic, which gave a new impulse to his taste for numbers; and perhaps, was the means of directing his mind in that channel. In his sixth and seventh years he improved very rapidly in his different arithmetics, and commenced on numerical calculations. He was found to improve rapidly by practice, and to lose rapidly when he did not practice. When directed by his parents to cast up a sum of figures in his mind, he would do it most cheerfully, but it did not seem to

afford him the same pleasure with the solution of a long problem in the higher branches of mathematics.

In November, 1844, the typhus fever prevailed at Royalton, and Henry was attacked with this alarming disorder. His parents, aware of the rich treasure which Providence had entrusted to their charge, took turns by his bedside, with a favourite aunt; and, dividing the night into three equal parts, they were his only watchers for twenty-three successive nights, -refusing to entrust him to the care of strangers, lest some mistake or neglect might give his disease a fatal termination. When the alarming crisis of his disease had passed, and he was slowly recovering, he pleaded most affectingly with his mother for Day's Algebra and his slate. His mother, aware of his extreme nervousness and irritability at the time, thought it would be better to gratify than to refuse him, and gave him the algebra and slate. He immediately commenced making a long statement, which extended nearly across the slate, but before he could finish it, his little hand failed, his pencil dropped, and giving up in despair, he burst into tears, and wept long and bitterly.

Two or three days after, his father returned from Woodstock with Greenleaf's arithmetic, as a present from one of his friends. The intention was to keep it from him until he had sufficiently recovered to render its perusal safe. But the moment he found the book was in the house, he pleaded for it, until the physician who was present consented to try the experiment, and the book was placed in his hands. immediately turned to the 258th page, on which the proportion which the diameter of a circle bears to the circumference, is carried to a very great number of decimals—he grasped the book with both his hands, and it could only be wrested from him by force.

He

After his recovery, he commenced the study of Hutton's Mathematics, and also the Cambridge Mathe

matics, which, with what arithmetics and algebras he had, together with Gregory's Dictionary, furnished him with an extensive course in the winter of 1844-5.

In the spring of 1845, Henry began to be much engaged with the idea of calculating an almanack. Every old almanack in the house was treasured up in his little chest where he kept his mathematical books; and sun's declination, rising and setting, moon southings, risings and settings, seemed to occupy all his thoughts. He wished for instruments for calculating eclipses, also, Gummere's Astronomy, and Bowditch's Navigator. His father promised him that when he visited his friends, after his corn planting, in the spring, that he would procure for him what he wanted, either at Norwich or Hanover, on the opposite side of Connecticut River. He was much excited when he came in sight of the college at Hanover, and the university at Norwich, and was still more excited the next day, and literally danced for joy, when he procured Bowditch's Navigator.

He began, on his arrival at home, to cast his almanack, and succeeded. The almanack was put to press in the autumn of 1845, and was cast when Henry was nine years and six months old. We have a copy of this almanack before us.

In the summer of 1846, Henry calculated four different almanack calendars, viz., one for Cincinnati, which was published with a portrait; one for Philadelphia; one for Boston; and one for Vermont. While getting up the Cincinnati one, he became much abstracted in his manner, wandered about with his head down, talking to himself, as is his manner while originating new rules. His father approached him and enquired what he was doing, and found that he had originated a new rule for getting moon risings and settings, accompanied with a table which saves full one-fourth of the work in casting moon risings. This rule, with a number of others, for calculating eclipses,