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These experiments continued for some time. Meanwhile, vacation days having ended, Isaiah returned to school. Unfortunately, the boy had been kept grinding at the elements when flexibility and susceptibility had long passed their zenith. He had at last, however, arrived at the dignity of geography, which lent momentary zest to his flagging spirits. To encourage the new zeal, I talked over the subject with him at night. A lesson on the races of men seemed to impress him more than usual. When I asked him to repeat the five races whose names and traits he had learned in the morning; he recalled all but the Malay. I finally told him the forgotten name, when he instantly responded, "Oh, yes, the malaria race!" I repeated the name several times without comment, but he failed to notice the distinction. The very next evening a little white girl of ten years, who had also just entered the fifth grade, was telling me the same lesson, and she, like Isaiah, had forgotten the name of one race, the Mongolian. After the omission had been supplied, I turned to her mother and told the story of Isaiah's slip. Quick as a flash and with evident amusement the child exclaimed, "Oh, he mistook a disease for a people!" The inference is plain: the one had groups of apperceptions in her mind that were entirely wanting to the other.

That I may not fail to give the positive side of Isaiah's linguistic attainment, I present here a specimen of his original composition. It is an account of a feature in a well-known game which, so far as I can ascertain, was introduced by colored boys:

"The first boy who I new to play prisoners-base was Charles H. Dorsey And the way you play it is to have equal number on each side of the street and one has to show a lead if he get cought he has to hold out his bans. And if he falls he will say broken bones."

The statement, it will be seen, comprises fifty-five words besides a proper name. Of these, all but four are monosyllables. A peculiar phrasing not unlike that common among deaf-mutes has resulted from the boy's inability to master the subtleties of connecting particles.

The facts here presented are not, in themselves alone, either novel or significant. The question which they raise is, however, fundamental. Are they the sign of inherent deficiency or are they the outcome simply of external conditions? In dealing