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Great verbal memory, though a rare gift, is present wherever the language faculty exists in a high degree. In fact, the latter is largely dependent upon the former, and could hardly exist without it. It is said of Macaulay, who had a marvellously wide range of information and was an omnivorous reader, that he could quote almost any fact which he wished to use in the exact words of the author from whom he obtained it.

With all men language is largely a matter of memory. Verbal memory is what gives the linguist his facility in language. He need not possess the reasoning power in marked degree, and great reason power is often accompanied by halting speech, showing the possession of inferior verbal memory.

The attempt has been made in some quarters to attribute Helen Keller's success in language to her articulation. It will not stand on that ground for a minute. Her rare language-gift was perfectly manifest long before she received her first lesson in articulation, and to her previous knowledge was largely due her success in learning to speak -- a success without a parallel in one deaf so young, I think it may fairly be said, on either side of the Atlantic. Hundreds of witnesses can testify to her fluency of speech. It is not natural, but it is intelligible -- the true test of speech. It would be no more fair to claim Helen Keller as a fair sample of the results of articulation teaching to the deaf than to maintain that Solomon was a fair representative of the graduates of the schools of Jerusalem, or that in inventive talent Thomas Edison is an ordinary specimen of the men of America.

No! No school, no method of teaching, no teacher, can claim the merit of Helen Keller's success in acquiring speech. In the rapidity and accuracy with which she gained it she stands alone among all deaf children who have learned speech without the aid of hearing.

Taking this child all in all, and making due allowance for every possible aid that has been given her and for all unconscious exaggeration due to friendly admiration, there yet remains so much that is marvellous as to place her beyond comparison with any other child of whom we have ever heard. The whole history of literature reveals nothing equal to her language productions from one of her years, even among those possessed of all their faculties. She is a genius, a prodigy, a phenomenon.

JOB WILLIAMS, L. H. D.,
Principal of the American Asylum,
Hartford, Conn.