labor the brain undertakes, if any, indeed, be needed, in mastering ideas properly presented, and suitable to the condition of the sufferer.  One might as well forbid the hand to grasp, the eye to see, nay, more, it will not do to confound the child of genius with the fool, or to suppose that the one needs not a mental aliment of which the other is incapable.  Feed well the hungry mind, lest it perish of inanition.  It is a sponge in infancy that imbibes ideas without an effort; it is a safety-valve through which fancy and poetry conduct away foul vapors; it is an alembic, retaining only the pure and valuable of all that is poured into it, to be stored for future use.  It is a lightning-rod that conducts away from the body all superfluous electricity.  It does not harm a sensible child to put it to study early, but it destroys a dull one.  Let your poor soil lie fallow, but harvest your rich mould, and you shall be repaid, without harm to its fertility.

Ideas were balm to Ernie, even as regarded his physical suffering.  His enthusiasm rose above it and carried him to other spheres.

Some illustrated volumes of “Wilson’s Ornithology,” which I found in the bookcase, proved to be oil on troubled waters in Ernie’s case; and before long he knew, without an effort, the name of every bird in the two folios of prints, and would come of his own accord to repeat and point them out to me.

I found, to my amazement, that, when a cage of canaries was brought in and hung in the bath-room at my request for his amusement, he discriminated and gravely averred that no birds like those were to be found in his big book, though yellow hammers and orioles were there in their native colors, that might have deceived a less observant eye into a delusion as to their identity with our pretty importation.

Verses, remarkable for rhyme and rhythm both, when repeated to him a few times with scanning emphasis, took root in that fertile brain which piled his compact forehead so powerfully above his piercing, deep-set eyes, and fell from his infant lips in silvery melody as effortless and spontaneous as the trickling of water or the singing of birds in the trees.

Day by day I saw the little, wistful face relaxing from the hard-knot expression, so to speak, of sour and serious suffering, and assuming something akin to baby joyousness, and the small, warped figure, so low that it walked under my dropped and level hand, acquiring security of step and erectness of bearing.  I knew little of the treatment required for spinal disease, but common-sense taught me that, in order to effect a cure, the vertebral column must be relieved as much as possible from pressure, and allowed to rest.  So I persuaded him to lie down a great part of the time, and contrived for him a little sustaining brace to relieve him when he walked.

I fed him carefully; I bathed him tenderly, and rubbed his weary, aching limbs to rest, so that before many weeks the change was surprising, and the success of my treatment evident to all who saw him—­the comprehensive “all” being myself and two attendants.