January 26, 1888.

I suppose you got Helen's letter. The little rascal has taken it
into her head not to write with a pencil. I wanted her to write
to her Uncle Frank this morning, but she objected. She said:
"Pencil is very tired in head. I will write Uncle Frank braille
letter." I said, "But Uncle Frank cannot read braille." "I will
teach him," she said. I explained that Uncle Frank was old, and
couldn't learn braille easily. In a flash she answered, "I think
Uncle Frank is much (too) old to read very small letters."
Finally I persuaded her to write a few lines; but she broke her
pencil six times before she finished it. I said to her, "You are
a naughty girl." "No," she replied, "pencil is very weak." I
think her objection to pencil-writing is readily accounted for by
the fact that she has been asked to write so many specimens for
friends and strangers. You know how the children at the
Institution detest it. It is irksome because the process is so
slow, and they cannot read what they have written or correct
their mistakes.

Helen is more and more interested in colour. When I told her that
Mildred's eyes were blue, she asked, "Are they like wee skies?" A
little while after I had told her that a carnation that had been
given her was red, she puckered up her mouth and said, "Lips are
like one pink." I told her they were tulips; but of course she
didn't understand the word-play. I can't believe that the
colour-impressions she received during the year and a half she
could see and hear are entirely lost. Everything we have seen and
heard is in the mind somewhere. It may be too vague and confused
to be recognizable, but it is there all the same, like the