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Her progress from this time was phenomenally rapid. It was and has ever since been a mind wholly consecrated to the service of learning. We sometimes wonder when she allowed herself time to play; for her powers were all focused on knowledge, and the eye of her mind was constantly alert. In this respect she was the ideal pupil so often sighed for by the weary teacher, so rarely realized.

An idea of the rapidity with which her mind developed may be gained from the fact that in April of 1887 the child who a month previously had been without a language or an idea of one was expressing thought in sentences. This she did at first in connection with objects. Being supplied with slips of paper containing words printed in raised letters, she would lay them on the corresponding objects, thus expressing, "Helen is in wardrobe;" "Box is on table;" The next step was to arrange the slips in a frame in the proper order to form sentences.

The methods ordinarily used with blind children were soon discarded, as the little pupil's intelligence overleaped conventional bounds and rendered intermediate steps in the educational process unnecessary. In an incredibly short time she could write, read books in raised letters, and spell manually, receiving the communications of others by having them spelled in her hand.

After fifteen months' instruction in her own home, Helen accompanied her teacher to the Perkins Institution in Boston, where Miss Sullivan continued her instruction for several years, with the splendid opportunities afforded by that school in the way of cabinets of specimens, stuffed animals, embossed books, etc.

It was there that Helen discovered that her little associates (blind but not deaf) had other means of communication than hers, and the question immediately sprang to her mind, "Do deaf children ever learn to speak?" Her teacher explained that they did, but it was very difficult, and they acquired speech by watching their teachers' lips.

"But could I not feel your mouth? "asked Helen.

For a child without hearing or any recollection of sound, and furthermore, with no sight to apprehend the visible elements of speech, to learn to articulate seemed too near the miraculous to come within the domain of education; so Helen went sorrowing, for a time, under the assurance that it was too difficult. But she had a hope that certainly was the earnest of fulfilment, and repeatedly spelled "I must speak." She was finally taken to Miss Sarah Fuller, a teacher of articulation in the Horace Mann School for the Deaf, where, in ten lessons, she mastered the elements of speech. It would take more space than we can command to sketch the details of this remarkable accomplishment. Suffice it to say that the sensitive fingers took the place of eyes and ears as the eager pupil explored Miss Fuller's lips, mouth and external throat to find the position of teeth, tongue and trachea in forming the different sounds, and that owing to absolute concentration her imitation of them was accurate.

It is a touching tribute to her unselfish nature that her first thought, on learning that she could speak, was of the joy it would give others. She writes:

"How glad my mother will be. I can hardly wait for June to come, I am so eager to speak to her and my little sister. Mildred could not understand me when I spelled with my fingers, but now she will sit on my lap and I will tell her many things to please her."

Painstaking practice has been required to develop her use of vocal language, but at the present writing her articulation is superior to that of most of the deaf who are assisted in learning by their vision. And what is yet more wonderful, she reads the speech of others by placing her fingers where the lips of the speaker play lightly upon them. Her studies are partly conducted by having books read to her in this manner.

For months, after her first lessons in speech, Helen was obliged to discontinue study, as the intense strain of that effort had impaired her health. She entirely recovered, however, and is pursuing studies in English literature, history, mathematics, Latin, French, etc., with unflagging zeal.

We venture no prophecy of the future; but it is safe to say that, thus far, Helen Keller is an educational prodigy without a parallel. Doubly handicapped by nature, she has not only risen to the level of her fully endowed fellows, but, in command of language and actual acquirements, has out-stripped them.

In what measure we may regard this girl as abnormal, or how far she is simply a skillful development of normal faculties, it is impossible to say. The scrutiny of science is focused upon her from all sides. The scalpel of psychology is busily probing her perceptions and the spectroscope of psychic science is analyzing her faculties. We can weigh a hair and measure a sunbeam; but the instruments to examine faculties are not so easily constructed.

No exhaustive analysis of Helen Keller's powers has yet been attempted, and those who seek to account for her accomplishments are only partly successful. There are yet unknown quantities in the equation. We cannot justly adopt the deaf child as a standard of comparison, for any one familiar with the inflexible expression of the deaf will realize how Helen's command of idiomatic language places her in-comparably above her fellows in affliction.