The astonishment everywhere excited by this prodigy, our aged readers may still recollect. Some people thought him a conjurer. A woman came to him one day, saying that twenty years ago she had had some spoons stolen, and asked him where they were. One good lady said that, in her opinion, God had endowed the child with a miraculous gift in order that he might explain the mysterious numbers of the prophecies. Some people manifested a certain degree of terror in his presence, as though he were possessed of the devil. What added to the marvel was, that the boy was totally unable to explain the processes by which he effected his calculations.

"God put it into my head," he said, one day, to an inquisitive lady," but I cannot put it into yours."

Some gentlemen of Boston offered to undertake the education of the boy, that this wonderful talent might be cultivated. But the foolish father, thinking he could gain more by exhibiting his son, refused the offer. The public, disapproving this selfish conduct, were less inclined than before to attend the exhibitions; and therefore, after an unprofitable tour in the South, Abia Colburn took his son to England.

In London, where he was exhibited for two or three years, his performances were almost incredibly difficult. Princes, nobles, philosophers, teachers, and the public were equally astounded. He gave, in less than half a minute, the number of seconds that had elapsed since the Christian era. He extracted the square root of numbers consisting of six figures, and the cube root of numbers consisting of nine figures, in less time than the result could be put down on paper. He was asked one day the factors of 171,395. There are seven pairs of factors by which that number can be produced, and only seven; the boy named them all as rapidly as they could be recorded. He was required to name the factors of 36,083. "There are none," was his instantaneous reply; and he was right. Again, the number, 4,294,967,297, was proposed to him to find the factors. Now, certain French mathematicians had asserted that this was a prime number; but the German, Euler, had discovered that its factors are 641 and 6,700,417. This wonderful boy, then aged eight years, by the mere operation of his mind, named the factors in

about twenty seconds. He was once requested to multiply 999,999 by itself. At first he said he could not do it. But, in looking at the number again, he perceived that multiplying 37,037, by 37,037, and the product twice by 27, was just the same as multiplying 999,999 by 999,999. How he discovered this is a mystery, but he soon gave the correct answer: 999,998,000,001. Then he said he could multiply that by 49, which he immediately did, and the product by 25, producing at length the enormous result of 60,024,879,950,060,025. He could raise numbers consisting of one figure to the sixteenth power in less than a minute.

Though these exploits excited universal wonder in England, the exhibition of the boy, owing to the great expenses attending it, were not very profitable and gradually became less so. At length the benevolent Earl of Bristol engaged to undertake the education of the child at Westminster school, agreeing to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars a year for eight years. But Zerah showed no remarkable aptitude for study, not even in arithmetic and geometry. Meanwhile the father lived in poverty. Thinking still to make a profit from the boy, he took him away from school and carried him to France, where he was again exhibited, but without success. Some gentlemen of Paris procured from Napoleon his admission to a military school; but the meddling father again interfered and returned with him to London. The patience of their English friends being then exhausted, they sunk into extreme poverty. Colburn then urged his son to go upon the stage as an actor, and he had still influence enough to procure for the youth instruction from no less a person than Charles Kemble. For a year or two Zerah led the life of a strolling actor, playing in tragedy and comedy, writing plays which no manager would accept, and living always in great poverty. Then he opened a small school, and gained a little money by performing calculations for an astronomer. At length, being relieved of the incubus of his worthless father, who died, the liberality ot the Earl of Bristol enabled him to return to America, where he found his mother still living upon her farm. He was then twenty-one years of age, After spending a short time in teaching, he became a Methodist preacher,

and remained in that vocation till his death. He died in Ver

mont in 1839, aged 34 years. Neither as a preacher nor as a man did he display even average ability. He was, in fact, a very dull preacher, and a very ordinary person in every respect.

As he grew older his calculating power diminished; but this was merely from want of practice. Doubtless, he could have retained his ability if he had continued to use it.

He was able, during the later years of his youth, to explain the processes by which he performed his calculations, some of which were so simple that they have since been employed in the New England schools. We have seen a class of boys, not more than twelve years of age, multiply six figures by six figures, without slate and pencil, by the method of Zerah Colburn. His mode of extracting the square root, also, can be acquired by boys quick at figures. But this does not lessen our astonishment that a boy of seven years, wholly untaught, should have discovered methods in calculation that had escaped the vigilance of mathematicians, from the days of Euclid to our own time.

JOHN ADAMS.

PEOPLE are mistaken who suppose that we have in America no old families. We have perhaps as many as other countries, only the torrent of emigration, and the suddenness with which new fortunes are made and lost, conceal the fact from our observation. The Adams family, for example, which descended from Thomas Adams, one of the first proprietors of Massachusetts, has gone on steadily increasing in wealth and numbers from 1620 to the present time, and the family estate still comprises the lands originally bought by the Adams who was grandfather to the second President of the United States. John Adams died worth one hundred thousand dollars. His son, John Quincy Adams, left, it is said, twice as much; and his son, Charles Francis Adams, now minister to London, is supposed to be worth two millions.

John Adams was born October 19, 1735. His father, who was also named John, was a farmer in good cirnumstances; and, following the custom of such in Massachusetts, he resolved to bring up one of his sons to the ministry, and sent him to Harvard College. In those days distinction of rank was so universally recognized that the students at Harvard or Yale were recorded and arranged according to the rank and dignity of their parents. I suppose the son of the governor would have taken precedence of all the rest, unless there chanced to be in the college a scion of the English aristocracy. John Adams, in a class of twentyfour, ranked fourteenth. On state occasions, when the class entered a room, he would have gone in fourteenth. His grandson tells us, that he would not have held even as high a rank as this, but that his mother's ancestors were persons of greater consequence than his father's. This custom of arranging the students

in accordance with the supposed social importance of their parents prevailed at Harvard until the year 1769, after which the alphabetical order was substituted.

Upon leaving college, he did what almost all poor students did at that day, kept school for awhile before entering upon the studies preparatory to his profession. He tells us, in his diary, that on commencement day he attracted some attention by his speech, which led to his being appointed Latin master to the grammar school of Worcester, and that three weeks after, when he was not yet twenty years of age, a horse was sent for him and a man to attend him.

"We made the journey," he says, "about sixty miles, in one day, and I entered on my office."

When the time came for him finally to choose a profession, he discovered in his mind a decided repugnance to that of the ministry.

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"I saw," he tells us, "such a spirit of dogmatism and bigotry in clergy and laity, that if I should be a priest I must take my side and pronounce as positively as any of them, or never get a parish, or, getting it, must soon leave it. Very strong doubts arose in my mind whether I was made for pulpit in such times, and I began to think of other professions. I perceived very clearly, as I thought, that the study of theology and the pursuit of it as a profession would involve me in endless altercations and make my life miserable, without any prospect of doing any good to my fellow-men."

The truth was that he had ceased to believe some of the doctrines of the orthodox church of New England, and had become what was then called a Deist, and what is now more politely termed a Unitarian; to which faith he ever after adhered.

His father had now done for him all that he could afford, and as it was a custom then for students and apprentices to pay a liberal fee to their instructors and masters, he was somewhat embarrassed in entering the profession of the law, which he had chosen. In his dilemma he went to one of the lawyers of Worcester, whose performances in court he had admired, stated his circumstances, and offered himself to him as his clerk and pupil. The lawyer replied, after considering the matter for a