Sir James Mackintosh, Dugald Stewart, and Dr.Gregory had similar reputations.
"Nor does great mental endowment entail physical enfeeblement; for, with temperance, literary men have reached extreme old age, as in the cases of Klopstock, Goethe, Chaucer, and the average age attained by all the signers of the American Declaration of Independence was sixty-four years, many of them being highly gifted men intellectually.
Thus, in the case of the phenomenal Oscar it cannot be predicted that he will not develop, as he now promises to do, equal and extraordinary powers of mind, even though it would be rare in one of his racial descent, and in the face of the fact that precocity gives no assurance of adult brightness, for it can be urged that John Stuart Mill read Greek when four years of age.
"The child is strumous, however, and may die young.

His exhibitors, who are coining him into money, should seek the best medical care for him and avoid surcharging his memory with rubbish.

Proper cultivation of his special senses, especially the tactile, by competent teachers, will give Oscar the best chance of developing intellectually and acquiring an education in the proper sense of the word." By long custom many men of letters have developed wonderful feats of memory; and among illiterate persons, by means of points of association, the power of memory has been little short of marvelous.

At a large hotel in Saratoga there was at one time a negro whose duty was to take charge of the hats and coats of the guests as they entered the dining-room and return to each his hat after the meal.

It was said that, without checks or the assistance of the owners, he invariably returned the right articles to the right persons on request, and no matter how large the crowd, his limit of memory never seemed to be reached.