Figures, for some reason, came much easier to him than the alphabet. He
learned the numerals in a few days, and by the fifth or sixth week of
school he could add and subtract on his slate. But the multiplication
table gave him serious trouble. The only way he succeeded in learning it
at all was by singing it. After he began to do sums in multiplication on
his slate, he was likely to burst forth singing in school hours:
"Seven times eight are fifty-six
--and carry five.
Seven times nine are sixty-three
--and carry seven.
No, no, no, no, carry six!"
"But, Mr. Lurvey, you must keep quiet in school!" the afflicted master
remonstrated for the hundredth time. "No one else can study."
"But I can't!" old Zack would reply. "'Twouldn't come to me 'less I sung
it!"
Toward the last weeks of the term he was able to multiply with
considerable accuracy and to divide in short division. Long division he
did not attempt, but he rapidly learned to cast interest at six per
cent. He had had a way of arriving at that with beans, before he came to
school; and no one had ever succeeded in cheating him. He knew about
interest money, he said, by "sense of feeling.
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