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DEAR DR. HOLMES: -- Your beautiful words about spring have been music in my heart, these bright April days. I love every word of "Spring" and "Spring Has Come." I think you will be glad to hear that these poems have taught me to enjoy and love the beautiful springtime, even though I cannot see the fair, frail blossoms which proclaim its approach, or hear the joyous warbling of the home-coming birds. But when I read "Spring Has Come," lo! I am not blind any longer, for I see with your eyes and hear with your ears. Sweet Mother Nature can have no secrets from me when my poet is near. I have chosen this paper because I want the spray of violets in the corner to tell you of my grateful love. I want you to see baby Tom, the little blind and deaf and dumb child who has just come to our pretty garden. He is poor and helpless and lonely now, but before another April education will have brought light and gladness into Tommy's life. If you do come, you will want to ask the kind people of Boston to help brighten Tommy's whole life. Your loving friend, HELEN KELLER.

This letter shows conclusively that nature is to Helen a grand spiritual symbol, moving her to meditative rapture. The outward spectacle is not accurately portrayed in her mind; but it is through the emotions enkindled in her breast that she perceives the external world. In the words of Wordsworth, she feels --

"A presence that disturbs her with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, --
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."

Dr. Holmes published the first of Helen's letters to him in the Atlantic Monthly of May, 1890, and from the remarks with which he accompanied it the following extract is taken: --

A child fuller of life and happiness it would be hard to find. It seems as if her soul were flooded with light and filled with music that had found entrance to it through avenues closed to other mortals. It is hard to understand how she has learned to deal with abstract ideas, and so far to supplement the blanks left by the senses of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of her as wanting in any human faculty. . . . Surely for this loving and lovely child does

"the celestial light
Shine inward."

Sense of Beauty.

"Better be born with taste to little rent,
Than the dull monarch of a continent."
Armstrong.

Helen aspires to full communion with all that is highest in thought and feeling, and is endowed with a rare artistic temperament. She loves poetry, and finds it everywhere, because she has an abundance of it within herself. Her mind is so fine, her emotions so strong, and her fancy so potent, that she is deeply impressed with all things that are good and lovely, fair and charming, chaste and exquisite. She is keenly sensitive to beauty, and whenever she comes in contact with it, an electric spark of sympathy and appreciation flashes upon her soul, and her whole nature is astir with life and aglow with delight. Like Wordsworth, she sees with the inward eye and projects visions and pictures from her brain outward. Her inner sight is as illimitable as that of Keats, who, in order to depict the effect which looking at Chapman's Homer had upon his mind, could write, --

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

On a pleasant day in March, Helen, accompanied by her teacher and myself, visited the studio of a young and promising artist, Mr. Albert H. Munsell, who favored her with a cordial reception and with a clear description of his own works and of those of others. On her return to the institution she made the following memorandum of her impressions: --

MARCH 12, 1891. -- Yesterday was a beautiful spring day. It seemed to me that there was a scent of growing grasses in the soft, warm air. The ground beneath our feet was all aquiver with the stir of new life. My heart sang for very joy. I thought of my own dear home. I knew that in that sunny land spring had come in all its splendor. "All its birds and all its blossoms, all its flowers and all its grasses." Teacher and I took a long walk in the morning. In sheltered places we found tender blades of grass struggling through the moist earth. Welcome! cried we; welcome, brave little heralds of spring time! Soon the bluebird and the robin will be your merry play-fellows.

In the afternoon Mr. Anagnos, teacher and I visited Mr. Munsell's studio. I was delighted to hear about the beautiful pictures he has painted. I should like so much to be an artist! Mr. Munsell loves the sea in all its moods, -- when it is bright and frolicsome, when it is sad and troubled, and when it is angry and beats against the rocks in all its fierce rage. I liked the picture of a dear old lady with a snowy cap, and a gentle hand covering her eyes, very much indeed. The wedding ring upon her finger was worn till it looked like a thread of gold. She was weary, and she sat there thinking of her absent boys and hoping that they were safe. The picture of the sea in September was also beautiful. The artist called the paintings his children. It is a pretty fancy, I think.