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 landscape we lose in the deepening twilight. February 10, 1888. We got home last night. We had a splendid time in Memphis, but I didn't rest much. It was nothing but excitement from first to last--drives, luncheons, receptions, and all that they involve when you have an eager, tireless child like Helen on your hands. She talked incessantly. I don't know what I should have done, had some of the young people not learned to talk with her. They relieved me as much as possible. But even then I can never have a quiet half hour to myself. It is always: "Oh, Miss Sullivan, please come and tell us what Helen means," or "Miss Sullivan, won't you please explain this to Helen? We can't make her understand." I believe half the white population of Memphis called on us. Helen was petted and caressed enough to spoil an angel; but I do not think it is possible to spoil her, she is too unconscious of herself, and too loving.