A Prodigy in Mental Arithmetic

Some years ago a German of the name of Dase exhibited his wonderful powers of calculation and memory before the Queen. I once met him at the house of a friend, but unfortunately arrived to late to witness more than a few of his feats. Sixty-four figures were chalked upon a board, at which Mr Dase gave what I thought to be a cursory glance, and, immediately turning his back upon them, he stated the order in which they were placed, and repeated them backward. He was then, without altering his position, dodged by one of the company, who asked, “What is the twenty-third figure?” He answered at once, and correctly. Again, a vast amount of dominoes–I wondered where they got so many–were distributed on the table among several ladies, who arranged them in squares of various dimensions, while Mr. Dase stood with back to the table. He was then requested to turn round, and in an incredibly short space of time he told us the number, not of the dominoes, but of the spots. Thus far the evidence of my own eyes and ears. For the rest, I was told he can multiply in his mind 100 figures by the like number. He is an hour about it, but he result is always correct. I was told that he could extract the square root of one hundred given numbers in fifty-two minutes.–University Magazine.