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*Read before the National Educational Association, Washington, D. C., July 13, 1899.

That sentiment of Charles Dickens, "It is better that every kind of work honestly undertaken and discharged should speak for itself rather than be spoken for," applies most pertinently to work among the feeble-minded; for not by exhibits alone, which show merely results, but by viewing actual working processes can the public be brought to rightly estimate the tremendous importance of this work, or in fact to understand at all the how, the why, and the wherefore of the training of mental defectives.

The basis in this scheme of development, where the three H's supersede the time-worn three R's, is the recognition of touch as the most sensitive as well as the most reactive of all the senses; therefore we utilize it as the master key which shall set free the powers of the head -- the hand -- the heart.

The axiom that the will is best stimulated by and through the emotions is daily verified in dealing with natures abso-lutely sluggish and indolent, intensely preverse and obstinate or unduly nervous and excitable. This stimulus to be health-ful must be natural, and what more natural to a child, from the days of traditional mud-pies up, than the love of making something, unless it be the love of tearing up, and even that has long since been recognized as due to a spirit of investigation, and to be therefore constructive rather than destructive. In-deed we must take the child as he is without attempting to make him over again; direct the destructive activities into constructive channels -- make the stream turn the wheel and it will not sweep away the mill.

A little ball which I have in our museum of children's work I am inclined to consider the most valuable thing in the whole collection. The boy who made it was almost of the lowest grade of mentality. His hand against every man, he fancied every man's against him. Always under close custodial care that he might harm neither himself nor others, he would vent his spleen in tearing his clothing. His teacher, a woman of rare patience and devotedness, one day sat beside him tearing strips of old linen and laying them in order. "See, Willie, let us make some pretty strips and lay them so." His wonder grew at seeing her doing what he had been scolded for doing, and at once there was a bond of sympathy. She was playing his game -- the only one, poor little fellow, that he was capable of -- and he joined in. "Now we will draw out the pretty threads and lay them in rows." For weeks the child found quiet pastime in this occupation and the violent nature grew quieter in proportion. One day the teacher said: "Let us tie these threads together and make a long string." It took him months to learn to tie those knots, but meanwhile his attend-ants were having a breathing space. "Now we will wind this into a pretty ball and I will cover all you make for the boys to play with," and a new occupation was added to his list. The next link in this curious chain of development was a lesson in knitting. Through months of patient teaching it was at last accomplished, and the boy to the day of his death found his life happiness in knitting caps for the children, in place of tearing both them and their clothes.

You see she was wise enough to utilize the natural activi-ties of the child and direct evil propensities into a healthful channel. Had she brought knitting and bright yarn or any-thing foreign to him first it would have been truly putting new wine into old bottles. His obstinacy would have been aroused and he would have torn clothes to the end of the chapter. Now just what this shows is to be found in varying re-sults throughout all the grades of trainable defectives or im-beciles. The idiot or unimprovable class and the idio-imbe-cile, the direction of whose feeble powers so far as to aid in the care of himself or his weaker brother can hardly be dignified by the term training, we will not discuss here, although they are unfortunately found in large proportion in the custodial departments of all training schools in this country. It is the imbecile or trainable class which is here presented in the four different grades which experience has dictated and proven. These grades of mentality are not to be confounded with school grades in the common acceptation of promotion in studies; on the contrary between these grades there is a distinct line be-yond which there is rarely an individual case of advance, though there may be, and often is, retrogression.

Here we have the low-grade who can never learn to read or write, trainable only in the simplest acts of house or farm service, who can know nothing beyond a life of drudgery, but will on the whole be content therein. This grade generally presents two types -- one good, docile, obedient, having little or no will power; such a one out in the world becomes the ready tool or the victim of the designing or the vicious, and thus innocently helps to fill our prison wards. The other obstinate, preverse and indolent, needs always a strong hand to keep him at constant occupation, which is all that preserves him from a lapse into idiocy. He would be the tyrant of a household-the terror of a community.