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I was very glad to hear about Munich, and I hope you will tell me about the other cities you have visited. Teacher and all of your friends send their love. I send very many kisses and much love.

HELEN A. KELLER.

These letters show that the time of the little student was fully occupied from morning to evening, and that she did not have much leisure for amusement; but the arrangement proved on the whole satisfactory, and everything went on well until the spring of 1890. About that period an undue pressure of work was put upon the child, taxing her strength to the utmost. This increase of labor, accompanied by an unwarrantable stimulation to over-exertion, was both very unwise and unnecessary; and it is not difficult to imagine that the results were most injurious to her health.

During the summer vacation she had a fainting fit at home and was declining in strength; and on her return to school in the following November she was far from well. Nervousness and excitability were apparent in her conversation and in all her movements. She was very restless, and there was a sickly whiteness in her look. Her sleep was not as sound and unbroken as before, nor was her desire for food as normal. She was evidently in need of absolute freedom from mental exertion and of abundant rest and play, which alone could relax her mind and enable her to turn to study again with more vigor.

In consideration of these facts, it was immediately decided that she should cease to have regular lessons of any kind, and that she should spend several hours every day in diversion and in physical exercise both in the gynasium -sic- and in the open air. Helen found the injunction laid upon her studies so hard to bear that she made many earnest appeals for its removal or modification; but when she was told, in response to her frequent pleas, that it was not best for her to receive any instruction until she should be very strong, she acquiesced in this conclusion graciously and without a murmur.

Under these new regulations Helen improved very rapidly; but when she was about to resume some of her studies, she was taken ill suddenly on the 13th of January last with scarlatina. Fortunately, however, the dread disease proved to be of a very mild form in her case, and from the third day of its appearance the little patient began to improve steadily, and was ready to leave her room in a few weeks. Since then her health has been thoroughly restored, and she is now as well as ever. During her illness her patience and thoughtfulness shone out in all their beauty.

Knowledge is peculiarly attractive to Helen, and she is very apt to go to excess in feasting on the fruit of its tree, if she is not properly guided and held in check. In her case restraint is needful, lest she drive the chariot of Apollo recklessly to her own hurt.

In temperament Helen is cheerful, merry, gay, full of life and jollity. In her playful moods she is not only appreciative of mirth but is often the cause of it. No mishap can subdue her liveliness. Even at times when she is disappointed at something or occupied with serious thoughts or penetrated with some distressing anxiety, her delightful springs of joy and fun bubble and brim with inevitable felicity. The "chord of melancholy," of which Thomas Hood speaks as inseparable from every "string attuned to mirth," has no existence in the harp of her life. However smooth the way of its victims may be made, a triple affliction like hers is terrible, it cannot be otherwise; yet in Helen's case it has proved to be a battlefield, which has its heroine. True, like all others who are cruelly bereft of the principal avenues of sense, she is doomed to pass her life in total physical darkness and stillness; but through the thick, sullen cloud which surrounds her she "casts forward the eye of the spirit, and wakes in her soul the imaginative power which carries forth what is fairest, what is highest life."

Marked graciousness, intense longing for the beautiful, acute and winning sensibility, a gleeful disposition and an indomitable buoyancy, -- these are the distinguishing qualities of her temper. There is a certain nameless attraction about Helen's personality, as perceptible as the perfume of a flower, and as elusive. She has an uncommon soul-power, which touches all hearts and leads them captive. She possesses two characteristics which do not often go together, -- vigor and sweetness. Her gayety adorns her and at the same time serves to relax the tension of her nerves, which is inclined to be too great.

II. MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.

"There is a child whom genius fires,
Whose every thought the god inspires."

Helen is an intellectual prodigy. In the ranks of precocious and brilliant children she occupies a most prominent position. She is a queen among them, endowed with stupendous abilities, and ruling by the resistless might of her natural superiority. Her brain is ever aglow with self-kindled flame. It may be compared to an electric battery bristling with magnetic life. Hers is not a creeping talent; it is a soaring genius, -- a true spark of the sacred fire, which the world does well to make the most of while it is alight. Exceptional fervor of temperament, rare intellectual vivacity, intense earnestness, -- these are her primary characteristics. She has uncommon mental power. Hence her dazzling conquests in the field of learning.