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From Miss Sullivan's notes and memoranda I take the following extracts, which give additional illustrations of Helen's astonishing quickness in perceiving and associating ideas, as well as of her devotion to her pets and of her warm sympathy with all living creatures: --

One day, while her pony and donkey were standing side by side, Helen went from one to the other, examining them closely. At last she paused with her hand upon Neddy's head, and addressed him thus: "Yes, dear Neddy, it is true that you are not as beautiful as Black Beauty. Your body is not so handsomely formed, and there is no proud look in your face, and your neck does not arch. Besides, your long ears make you look a little funny. Of course you cannot help it, and I love you just as well as if you were the most beautiful creature in the world." She left the donkey with a tender caress, and went to her pony, her whole face lighting up with admiration as her sensitive hand followed the graceful lines which seeing persons so much admire.

She was asked why an elephant was like a traveller. Without hesitating an instant she replied, "I suppose because he carries his trunk about with him." But I ought to say that the person giving the conundrum made a mistake at first, and asked, "Why does an elephant carry a trunk?" Helen laughed and said, "Because he cannot help it; you know it is grown to the end of his nose." She then made what she calls a "word puzzle" out of conundrum, which was this: "I am made up of three syllables; my first is a company, my second lives in seclusion and my third is heard in battle; altogether I am a puzzler."

Helen has been greatly interested in the story of "Black Beauty." To show how quickly she perceives and associates ideas, I will give an instance which all who have read the book will be able to appreciate. I was reading the following paragraph to her: --

"The horse was an old, worn-out chestnut, with an ill-kept coat, and bones that showed plainly through it; the knees knuckled over, and the forelegs were very unsteady. I had been eating some hay, and the wind rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creature put out her long, thin neck and picked it up, and then turned round and looked about for more. There was a hopeless look in the dull eye that I could not help noticing, and then, as I was thinking where I had seen that horse before, she looked full at me and said, 'Black Beauty, is that you?'"

At this point Helen pressed my hand to stop me. She was sobbing convulsively. "It was poor Ginger," was all she could say at first. Later, when she was able to talk about it, she said, "Poor Ginger! The words made a distinct picture in my mind. I could see the way Ginger looked; all her beauty gone, her beautiful arched neck drooping, all the spirit gone out of her flashing eyes, all the playfulness gone out of her manner. Oh, how terrible it was! I never knew before that there could be such a change in anything. There were very few spots of sunshine in poor Ginger's life, and the sadnesses were so many!" After a moment she added, mournfully, "I fear some people's lives are just like Ginger's."

This morning Helen was reading for the first time Bryant's poem, "Oh, mother of a mighty race!" I said to her, "Tell me, when you have read the poem through, who you think the mother is." When she came to the line, "There's freedom at thy gates, and rest," she exclaimed, "It means America! The gate, I suppose, is New York City, and Freedom is the great statue of Liberty." After she had read "The Battlefield," by the same author, I asked her which verse she thought was the most beautiful. She replied, "I like this verse best, --

'Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies among his worshippers.'"

I do not think many children of eleven would have selected this verse. Her mind is so gifted by nature with capacities and powers that she is able to understand every possible variety of external relations.

It is extremely interesting to watch her while reading. The pages of the book she is perusing are paintings, to which her imagination gives color and life. She is at once transported into the midst of the events of her story. She rejoices when justice wins, she is sad when virtue lies low, and her face glows with admiration and reverence when heroic deeds are described. She even enters into the spirit of battle; she says, "I think it is right for men to fight against wrongs and tyrants."

Helen seems to be endowed with an inner vision, which opens to her magnificent vistas of such beauties as are hid from common view. The light which beams within her is of such subtle quality, of such spiritual virtue, that it not only illumines but transfigures whatever it falls on, and wherever it strikes it reveals something of the mystery of her being. To her the two vast worlds of mind and matter are not made up of opaque facts, cognizable by the understanding, and by it handled grossly and directly. Things, conditions, impressions, are taken lovingly into her mind, and are made prolific there by the power of thought. She possesses more than usual emotional capacity, in combination with sensibility to the beautiful, and is thereby stimulated to mould and shape into fresh forms the stores gathered by perception and memory, or the material originated within the mind through its creative fruitfulness. It was the power and range of Helen's inner vision that made a most profound impression on Mr. Steadman, one of the noblest poets of America, and moved him to give utterance to his feelings in a beautiful poem, from which we extract the following lines: --