Many
persons have seen expert players at draughts and chess who,
blindfolded, could carry on numerous games with many competitors
and win most of the matches. To realize what a wonderful feat of
memory this performance is, one need only see the absolute
exhaustion of one of these men after a match. In whist, some
experts have been able to detail the succession of the play of
the cards so many hands back that their competitors had long
since forgotten it.
There is reported to be in Johnson County, Missouri, a
mathematical wonder by the name of Rube Fields. At the present
day he is between forty and fifty years of age, and his external
appearance indicates poverty as well as indifference. His
temperament is most sluggish; he rarely speaks unless spoken to,
and his replies are erratic.
The boyhood of this strange character was that of an overgrown
country lout with boorish manners and silly mind. He did not and
would not go to school, and he asserts now that if he had done so
he "would have become as big a fool as other people." A shiftless
fellow, left to his own devices, he performed some wonderful
feats, and among the many stories connected with this period of
his life is one which describes how he actually ate up a
good-sized patch of sugar cane, simply because he found it good
to his taste.
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