not such a decided lighting up of the features as when I had held
her hand.

In the account of Helen last year it was stated that she knew
nothing about death, or the burial of the body; yet on entering a
cemetery for the first time in her life, she showed signs of
emotion--her eyes actually filling with tears.

A circumstance equally remarkable occurred last summer; but,
before relating it, I will mention what she now knows with regard
to death. Even before I knew her, she had handled a dead chicken,
or bird, or some other small animal. Some time after the visit to
the cemetery before referred to, Helen became interested in a
horse that had met with an accident by which one of his legs had
been badly injured, and she went daily with me to visit him. The
wounded leg soon became so much worse that the horse was
suspended from a beam. The animal groaned with pain, and Helen,
perceiving his groans, was filled with pity. At last it became
necessary to kill him, and, when Helen next asked to go and see
him, I told her that he was DEAD. This was the first time that
she had heard the word. I then explained that he had been shot to
relieve him from suffering, and that he was now BURIED--put into
the ground. I am inclined to believe that the idea of his having
been intentionally shot did not make much impression upon her;
but I think she did realize the fact that life was extinct in the
horse as in the dead birds she had touched, and also that he had
been put into the ground. Since this occurrence, I have used the
word DEAD whenever occasion required, but with no further
explanation of its meaning.