William Everett Cram

“ Blinded and imprisoned where we commonly see and understand, had some of his faculties and powers surpassed the ordinary bounds in a higher and finer development? It appeared so. Was he an idiot? What meant his power of seeing in the dark, of selecting from among a file of hundreds a paper containing a particular article, published a year or more before, though he had never learned to read a sentence as we understand reading? ”

“ IN the quiet little town of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, there has lately died a man whose life appears to the writer to present a psychological study of marked interest. Nature, in what are called her freaks, or abnormal products, oft-times gives us hints of powers altogether beyond the ordinary, but destined, it may be, through the development of the race, to become common possessions of mankind. This man furnishes a case in point.
The subject of our paper was about five feet six inches in height, when standing upright, but he stooped very much as he walked, his hands hanging far forward. ”

“ Thus we trace a man's way by the tracks he makes in the snow or soft ground, while his dog follows him more surely, not by these so palpable signs, but by some finer track or impression, over or within what we see. May it not be that while we trace and apprehend the thoughts of the printed page, through the impression of the black lettering, this man received some finer impression from the printed page than any we know? ”