in which he had declined to have a part. When the minister asked
him for it, he just remembered that it had been decided to call
me after my grandmother, and he gave her name as Helen Adams.

I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many
signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition. Everything that I
saw other people do I insisted upon imitating. At six months I
could pipe out "How d'ye," and one day I attracted every one's
attention by saying "Tea, tea, tea" quite plainly. Even after my
illness I remembered one of the words I had learned in these
early months. It was the word "water," and I continued to make
some sound for that word after all other speech was lost. I
ceased making the sound "wah-wah" only when I learned to spell
the word.

They tell me I walked the day I was a year old. My mother had
just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap,
when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves
that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor. I slipped from
my mother's lap and almost ran toward them. The impulse gone, I
fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.

These happy days did not last long. One brief spring, musical
with the song of robin and mocking-bird, one summer rich in fruit
and roses, one autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their
gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. Then, in the
dreary month of February, came the illness which closed my eyes
and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new-born
baby. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain.
The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however,