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Helen seemed a little serious after supper, and Mrs. H. asked her of what she was thinking. "I am thinking how very busy dear Mother Nature is in the springtime," she replied. When asked why she thought so, she answered: "Because she has so many children to take care of. She is the mother of everything; the flowers and trees and winds."

"How does Mother Nature take care of the flowers?" was the next question. "She sends the sunshine and rain to make them grow," Helen replied; and after a moment she added "I think the sunshine is Nature's warm smile, and the rain-drops are her tears."

Later she said: "I do not know if Mother Nature made me. I think my mother got me from heaven, but I do not know where that place is. I know that daisies and pansies come from seeds which have been put in the ground; but children do not grow out of the ground, I am sure. I have never seen a plant-child! But I cannot imagine who made Mother Nature, can you? I love the beautiful spring, because the budding trees and the blossoming flowers and the tender green leaves till my heart with joy. I must go now to see my garden. The daisies and the pansies will think I have forgotten them."

After May, 1890, it was evident to me that she had reached a point where it was impossible to conceal from her the religious beliefs held by those with whom she was constantly coming in contact. She almost overwhelmed me with inquiries which were the natural outgrowth of her quickened intelligence.

Early in May she wrote on her tablet the following list of questions: --

I wish to write about things I do not understand. Who made the earth and the seas, and everything? What makes the sun hot? Where was I before I came to mother? I know that plants grow from seeds which are in the ground, but I am sure people do not grow that way. I never saw a child-plant. Little birds and chickens come out of eggs. I have seen them. What was the egg before it was an egg? Why does not the earth fall, it is so very large and heavy? Tell me something that Father Nature does. May I read the book called the Bible? Please tell your little pupil many things when you have much time.

Can any one doubt after reading these questions that the child who was capable of asking them was also capable of understanding at least their elementary answers? She could not, of course, have grasped such abstractions as a complete answer to her questions would involve; but one's whole life is nothing more than a continual advance in the comprehension of the meaning and scope of such ideas.

Throughout Helen's education, I have invariably assumed that she can understand whatever it is desirable for her to know. If there were not existing in the minds of children a whole dormant system of metaphysics, how could they receive those abstract truths which we cannot explain by any analogy with our physical relations, but can only define by empty words? Unless there had been in Helen's mind some such intellectual process as the above questions indicate, any explanation of them would have been unintelligible to her. Without that degree of mental development and activity, which perceives the necessity of superhuman creative power for the explanation of natural phenomena, all the instruction in the world would fail to give to the child anything like an intellectual perception of a creator.

After she had clothed in appropriate language the ideas which had been slowly framing in her mind, they seemed suddenly to absorb all her thoughts, and she became impatient to have everything explained. As we were passing the large globe in the rotunda of the main building a short time after she had written the questions, she stopped before it and asked, "who made the real world?" I replied: "No one knows how the earth, the sun, and all the worlds which we call stars came to be; but men have tried in many ways to account for their origin, and to interpret the great and mysterious forces of nature."

She knew that the Greeks had many gods to whom they ascribed various powers, because they believed that the sun, the lightning and a hundred other natural forces were independent and superhuman powers. But after a great deal of thought and study, men came to believe that all forces were manifestations of one power, and to that power they gave the name God.

She was very still for a few minutes, evidently thinking earnestly. She then asked, "who made God?" I was compelled to evade her question, for I could not explain to her the mystery of a self-existent being. Indeed, many of her eager questions would have puzzled a far wiser person than I am. Here are some of them: "What did God make the new worlds out of?" "Where did he get the soil, and the water, and the seeds, and the first animals?" "Where is God?" "Did you ever see God?" I told her that God was everywhere, and that she must not think of him as a person, but as the life, the mind, the soul of everything. She interrupted me: "Everything does not have life. The rocks have not life, and they cannot think." It is often necessary to remind her that there are infinitely many things that the wisest people in the world cannot explain. "But we must study very hard, and perhaps we shall find out more about them," is her invariable reply. Throughout Helen's education I have encouraged her to believe in her own thought, -- to watch for the gleams of light which flash across her own mind, and to abide by her spontaneous impressions.