iS93.] 149 fBlake. 
awfiy in her pockel as a int'ineiito. She asked for tlie furniture 
of wliich the room had been bereft ; found her wa}' directly to the 
barn near by and to the tree wliich she used to climb, and even 
after she had left the place reproduced with her jjlayiiig blocks 
ui)on the floor the house, the barn, the cistern, and the tree, all in 
the exact relation of direction to each other and in accurate 
proi)ortion. 
Think for a moment of this imprisoned child seeking in dark- 
ness and in silence a knowledge of the world about her, and in 
solitude born of a lack of her own power of communicating, stor- 
ing up the memories of a home, and self educating that intelligence 
which later was to blossom out in the warmth and sunshine of 
a teacher's love-directed work. The character of this work was of 
necessity based upon the utilization of the tactile sense, and its 
first step was in the provision of a means of comnnmication 
between teacher and ]»upil. This was accomplished through the 
single hand deaf and dumb alphabet as modified for the instruction 
of blind deaf mutes, by impressing the letters foriiied I)y the hand 
of the teacher upon the ])alni of the pupil's hand. 
The first experiment in this direction was made in teac^hing 
words of one syllable, and was suggested by the child taking a 
small basket and putting it upon her head as if it were a hat. 
The word liat was spelled upon the palm of the child's iiaixl, the 
basket taken from her, again replaced upon her head and the 
woi"d again spelled in the same manner. The child's Angers were 
then placed in the position to form the successive letters of the 
Avord until coincidentally with the placing of the basket on her 
head she learned to spell the word herself. 
From this first step she has grown in three yeiu-s to have 
a vocabulary of over three thousand words, to which she is (hiiiy 
adding, and within two months after her first she had learned not 
oidy to understand what was spelled ui)on her hand but to answer 
by the single hand aljihabet with corresponding rapidity. 
With this channel of communication opened, her education 
went on apace. The next step was to utilize her toucli sense for 
the purpose of making her understand the spoken language. To 
this end her hand was placed upon the teacher's mouth, throat, 
and chest, and she was made to appreciate, by having the words 
spoken s])elled out upon her hand, that the movements of the 
face, the lips, the tongue, the jaw, had a definite meaning and 
