_Boy No. 3_ was a youth over fourteen years old, regularly and symmetrically formed in face, features, and person. There was nothing in his make or bearing to indicate any marked peculiarity. Yet he had a peculiarity as marked as that of the preceding. He was singularly deficient in the capacity for mathematical studies. He was studying English grammar, geography, and Latin, and got along in these branches about as well as the majority of his class. But when it came to the science of numbers, he seemed to stick fast. Neither I nor any of my teachers had been able to get him beyond Long Division. It was as clear a case as I have ever known of natural deficiency in that department of the mental constitution. Yet this boy was declared by the manipulator to have a decided talent for mathematics. _Boy No. 4_ was my crack mathematician. He was really in mathematics what our manipulator had made out No. 2 to be in music. His quickness in the perception of mathematical truth was wonderful. Besides this natural readiness in everything pertaining to the science of quantity and the relations of numbers, he had received a good mathematical training, and he was in this department far in advance of his years. Whenever we had a public exhibition, George was our show-card. The rapidity with which he would fill the blackboard, in solving difficult problems in quadratics, was almost bewildering. It was not every teacher even that could follow him in his quick but exact evolutions of complex algebraical formulae. In Greek and Latin he hardly attained to mediocrity, being always behind his class, while in mathematics he was superior, not only to every boy in school, but to any boy of the same age that I have ever had in any school. But this boy received from the Professor only a second or third-rate rank for mathematical indications, while highly praised for linguistics, in which he was decidedly inferior. The fact was, I saw that the gentleman was trying to read _me_, as well as the more youthful part of his audience; and so, in questioning him about this boy, I was malicious enough to be very minute and specific in my inquiries about any indications of a talent for language, while the questions about mathematics were propounded just like those about half a dozen other points; that is, with no special stress or emphasis, but just enough to draw from the Professor a clear and distinct expression of opinion.