The Calculating: Boy Company.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3418, 9 December 1896, Page 2

The Calculating: Boy Company.

" For as in nature so in' man we find prodigous births of body and mind," says some poet or other, and this fact is wonderfully exemplified in the extraordinary powers possessed by the above youthful and intellectual prodigy — for we can call him nothing else — who is to appear at the Opera House on Thursday and Friday next. Following has been written of the lad Dudley: — ''In the physical sphere the 19th Century has bad its Sandow, and in the mental we .have had our Tennyson and Darwins, but it is doubtful with the exception of the boys George Bidder and Zerah Coulbourn Whether the present century has had such an example as this mere child. There is only one theoiy on which this phenomenon can be explained of such early and extraordinary development of faculty in a given direction, and that is stated above by the poet. Young ' Dudley has appeared before most of tho orowned heads of Europe, is evidently a born arithmetician, a natural caloulative genius ; and the press throughput Australia, where he proved a perfeot sensa* I tion, bear testimony to his astonishing feats of memory and mind in the domain of figures. No combination of numbers, however abstruse or lengthy, seems to puzzle him. In an exhibition given by him at the Otago High School he fairly confounded tbe whole array of pedagogic talent there, and there can be no doubt as his marvellous abilities." However, we are anticipating the treat in store for the public ; they will have an opportunity of seeing and beholding what others have seen and beheld on next Thursday and Friday evenings. Accompanying the Calculating Boy is the original Georgia Magnet, of whom so much was written in the Home press some four years ago. A little lady weighing 8 stone defied tbe Czar of Russia to move or lift her, also the efforts of Sandow, Sampson, Cyr, dhd the strongest men of the Old World were failures in her many experiments. There are other wonderful novelties in the company that have never before visited New Zealand, interspersed with songs, &c, and we should anticipate good houses for such a novel entertainment of this calibre.