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Dr. Oliver Wendall Holmes, to whom the little girl made a memorable visit, writes: "I am surprised at the mastery of language that your letter shows. It almost makes me think the world would get along as well without the senses of sight and hearing as with them. Perhaps people would be better in a great many ways, for they could not fight as they do now. Just think of an army of blind people with guns and cannon. Think of the poor drummers! Of what use would they and their drum-sticks be?. . . It does great credit not only to you but to your instructors who have so broken down the walls that seemed to shut you in that now your outlook seems more bright and cheerful than that of many seeing and hearing children."

Her chaste, beautiful language Helen owes to her marvellous memory and the choiceness of her environment. Hers is a mind that retains the language poured into in without conscious effort. No expression, turn of thought, or figure seems ever to escape her. When we remember that her little world has been a choicely circumscribed one, her associates cultured people, and that from the loose, ungrammatical talk which unconsciously corrupts a child's diction she has been removed by her affliction, we can realize from what pure sources she draws her language. In her store-house are the treasures of Whittier, Holmes, Tennyson, Longfellow, retained not merely in their substance but pre-serving the very language-mold in which they were cast. When she wishes to clothe her thoughts, all this wealth is hers upon demand without the search for words and similes which a less nimble memory necessitates. Dr. A. Grahman -sic- Bell, in a paper read before the National Acaddemy -sic- of Sciences at Washington, characterizes this phenomenon as unconscious plagiarism. We must not, however, regard Helen's language as a dilution of classic literature. This it would be if memory were her only great endowment. But to it is wedded a powerful imagination that creates where the single faculty would reproduce. Her conversation sparkles with figures, descriptions, and pretty conceits which doubtless draw their substance from the writings of great authors; but they are so tinted and re-arranged by Helen's rich fancy that they become, practically, her own. Note the graceful fancies in the following, culled from her every-day speech:

One day, while gathering flowers about some hillside springs in Alabama, she exclaimed; "The mountains are crowding around the springs to look at their own beautiful reflection."

Referring, at another time, to a visit in Lexington, Mass,, she writes. "As we rode along, we could see the forest monarchs bend their proud forms to listen to the little children of the woodlands whispering their secrets. The anemone, the wild violet, the hepatica, and the funny little curled-up ferns all peeped out at us from beneath the brown leaves."

"I think the flowers are God's smiles," she remarked one day. "When the flower wilts, the perfume is its soul going up to God.

To these two faculties of memory and imagination, the little pupil owes not only the clothing of her thought but her wonderful store of information, A schedule of what she has studied would give but a meagre idea of her knowledge. There seems to be absolutely no subject on which she cannot converse intelligently. At the public receptions held for her in several of our great cities, she has been the centre of curious circles of educators, scientists, philosophers, ministers, men of every school of thought, and these have plied her with questions from their several standpoints. The answers which fall from her lips are little short of marvellous.

Even if we accept the psychological theory that what gains a lodgment in the mind is never really forgotten, the wonder still remains; for memory may indeed preserve the records of all that enters the mind, but it is quite another matter to persuade it to give up the facts at the right time. Helen's facility for recalling is nearly perfect, and her knowledge is so classified that she knows just where to turn for the most diverse material.

In what degree may this girl be regarded as a revelation of the possibilities within the reach of every child?

No close comparison can fairly be made between her and the ordinary child; for aside from the question of abnormal endowment, she owes much of her memory development to her very affliction. She lives in a world of absolute quiet and darkness, undistracted by the multitude of impressions that approach us simultaneously through eye and ear. In her studies but one sense (that of touch) is on strict duty at a time. Through manual spelling or speech manually apprehended ideas are presented with no rival impressions to efface them. The most perfect concentration (on which memory so largely depends) is thus possible. With powers accurately focussed on the entering thought, it makes an intense, clear-cut impression somewhat like that we occasionally receive when one sense is unduly exalted, and the others, for the time, are in abeyance.