mark to Miss Sullivan on her way home, "I am not dumb now." In a conversation some two weeks later with Dr. Bell, Miss Sullivan, and myself, a still greater freedom in the use of speech was noticeable. Miss Sullivan fully appreciated the victory gained, for she wrote to Mr. Anagnos two months after Helen Had taken her first lesson: "Think of it! Helen achieved in less than two months what it takes the pupils of schools for the deaf several years to accomplish, and then they do not speak as plainly as she does." Helen's own joy in this conscious possession of a new power was shown in the following letter she wrote me a week or so after she had taken her first lesson. It also reveals the origin of her desire for speech.
My dear Miss Fuller:
My heart is full of joy this beautiful morning because I have learned to speak many new words, and I can make a few sentences. Last evening I went out in the yard and spoke to the moon. I said, "O moon, come to me I" Do you think the lovely moon was glad that I could speak to her? How glad my mother will be I I can hardly wait for June to come, I am so eager to speak to her and to my precious little sister. Mildred could not understand me when I spelled with my fingers, but now she wiU sit in my lap, and I will tell her many things to please her, and we shall be so happy together. Are you very, very happy because you can make so many people happy? I think you are very kind and patient, and I love you very dearly. My teacher told me Tuesday that you wanted to know how I came to wish to talk with my mouth. I will tell you all about it, for I remember my thoughts perfectly. When I was a very little child I used to sit in my mother's lap nearly all the time, because I was very timid, and did not like to be left by myself. And I would keep my little hand on her face all the while, because it amused me to feel her face and lips move when she talked with people. I did not know then what she was doing, for 1 was quite ignorant of all things. Then, when I was older, I learned to play with my nurse and the little negro children, and I noticed that they kept moving their lips like my mother, so I moved mine, too, but sometimes it made me angry, and I would hold my playmates' mouths very hard. I did not know then that it was very-naughty to do so. After a long time my dear teacher came to me, and taught me to connnunicate with my fingers, and I was satisfied and happy. but when I came to school in Boston I met some deaf people who talked with their mouths like all other people, and one day a lady who had been to Norway came to see me, and told me of a blind and deaf girl she had seen in that far-away land who had been taught to speak and understand others when they spoke to her. This good and happy news delighted me exceedingly, for then I was sure that 1 should learn also. 1 tried to make sounds like my little playmates, but teacher told me that the voice was very delicate and sensitive, and that it would injure it to make incorrect sounds, and promised to take me to see a kind and wise lady who would teach me rightly. That lady was yourself. Now I am as happy as the little birds, because I can speak; and perhaps I shall sing, too. All of my friends will be so surprised and glad.
Your loving little pupil,
From time to time I noted the improvement of this remarkable girl in the use of speech, and I am free to confess that one of the great joys of my life was when, six years after the first lessons, it was my privilege not only to suggest her as a speaker for the fifth summer meeting of the American Association to promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf at the Pennsylvania Institution at Mount Airy, but to see and hear the successful effort. The speech, written out by herself on the typewriter, was committed to memory and now repeated without a mistake.
MARY ELIZABETH KIMBALL, Past President of the National Alliance, Daughters of Veterans, is a successful teacher in the public schools of Fitchburg, Mass., her native place. The daughter of General John White Kimball, of that city, and grand-daughter of Alpheus Kimball, who was born in Fitchburg in 1792 and died in 1858, she is of the fifth generation in Worcester County and the ninth in Massachusetts of the family founded by Richard Kimball, an early settler of Ipswich.
Richard* Kimball came over from England in 1634, and with his family took up his abode in Watertown, but was induced not long after to remove to Ipswich, where there was need of a wheelwright.
Thomas^ Kimball, born in Rattlesden, Suffolk, England, in 1633, son of Richard* and his wife, Ursula Scott^ married Mary Smith, and settled in Bradford, then a part of Rowley, Mass. Their son Thomas,' born in 1665, married Deborah Pemberton, and was the
