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seems to have been so thorough, by the use of the ophthalmoscope and other modern appliances and tests, that no regrets ought to be indulged as to the brevity of the time employed in experiments. Besides, we have superadded a short and minute account of our own, verifying some of the most curious facts reported, with several tests proposed by ourselves and not included in the statement of the scientific committee. To begin, then, with the beginning of the inquiries by the committee. They were conducted into a small back room, darkened by old blankets hung up at the window, for the purpose of the total exclusion of daylight; an absurd remedy for blindness, recommended by a noted quack whose name adorns the extra fly-leaf of the San Francisco _Truth Teller_. The lad was reclining upon an old settee, ill-clad and almost idiotic in expression. As the committee soon ascertained, his mother only was at home, the father being absent at his customary occupation--that of switch-tender on the San Jose Railroad. She notified her son of the presence of strangers and he rose and walked with a firm step toward where the gentlemen stood, at the entrance of the room. He shook them all by the hand and bade them good morning. In reply to questions rapidly put and answered by his mother, the following account of the infancy of the boy and the accidental discovery of his extraordinary powers of vision was given: He was born in the house where the committee found him, nine years ago the 15th of last January. Nothing of an unusual character occurred until his second year, when it was announced by a neighbor that the boy was completely blind, his parents never having been suspicious of the fact before that time, although the mother declared that for some months anterior to the discovery she had noticed some acts of the child that seemed to indicate mental imbecility rather than blindness. From this time forward until a few months ago nothing happened to vary the boy's existence except a new remedy now and then prescribed by neighbors for the supposed malady. He was mostly confined to a darkened chamber, and was never trusted alone out of doors. He grew familiar, by touch and sound, with the forms of most objects about him, and could form very accurate guesses of the color and texture of them all. His conversational powers did not seem greatly impaired, and he readily acquired much useful knowledge from listening attentively to everything
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