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Show VOUXG IMMORTALS. The Germans call them "Wunder Kinder" wonder children and Germany. Ger-many. Austria and Hungary have had a lion's share of them, these "marvelous "mar-velous boys." who at eight and ten or at twelve years old have become spe-bialists spe-bialists in art or in science. Nearly always these infant prodigies are prodigiously pro-digiously musical, and sometimes they grow up into great men. as Mozart and Haydn grew, but pathetically often they die before twenty, die of their own premature ripening. There was one universal genius, only one. Admirable Crichton, but scores of boys have shown genius in one direction at an age when most children are mere babies. Mozart began be-gan to compose at the age of four; Pope was but five when he "lisped in numbers and the numbers came"; Millais showed genius before he was six. and was but ten years old when his paintings were accepted by the National Academy. Chatterton died at seventeen, after an astonishing career. Henry Kirke White and John Keats were great poets at twelve; one died at twenty-one, the other . at twenty-four twenty-four young immortals. . |