Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches.

by W. H. Rhodes

"And if I did, they will not let you see him."

"Let me alone for that," said I, smiling; "a reporter, like love, finds his way where wolves would fear to tread."

"Really, my dear sir," quickly responded the Doctor, "I have no time to chat this morning. Our special committee submitted its report yesterday, which is on file in that book-case; and if you will promise not to publish it until after it has been read in open session of the College, you may take it to your sanctum, run it over, and clip from it enough to satisfy the public for the present."

Saying this, he rose from his seat, opened the case, took from a pigeon-hole a voluminous written document tied up with red tape, and handed it to me, adding, "Be careful!" Seating himself without another word, he turned his back on me, and I sallied forth into the street.

Reaching the office, I scrutinized the writing on the envelope, and found it as follows: "Report of Special Committee—Boy Palmer—Vision—Laws of Light—Filed February 10, 1876—Stittmore, Sec." Opening the document, I saw at once that it was a full, accurate, and, up to the present time, complete account of the phenomenal case I was after, and regretted the promise made not to publish the entire report until read in open session of the College. Therefore, I shall be compelled to give the substance of the report in my own words, only giving verbatim now and then a few scientific phrases which are not fully intelligible to me, or susceptible of circumlocution in common language.

The report is signed by Doctors Bryant, Gadbury and Golson, three of our ablest medical men, and approved by Professor Smyth, the oculist. So far, therefore, as authenticity and scientific accuracy are concerned, our readers may rely implicitly upon the absolute correctness of every fact stated and conclusion reached.

The first paragraph of the report gives the name of the child, "John Palmer, age, nine years, and place of residence, South San Francisco, Culp Hill, near Catholic Orphan Asylum;" and then plunges at once into in medias res.

It appears that the period through which the investigation ran was only fifteen days; but it 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 that was said in his presence. He was quite a musician, and touched the harmonicon, banjo and accordeon with skill and feeling. He was unusually sensitive to the presence of light, though incapable of seeing any object with any degree of distinctness; and hence the attempt to exclude light as the greatest enemy to the recovery of vision. It was very strange that up to the time of the examination of the committee, no scientific examination of the boy's eye had been made by a competent oculist, the parents contenting themselves with the chance opinions of visitors or the cheap nostrums of quacks. It is perhaps fortunate for science that this was the case, as a cure for the eye might have been an extinction of its abnormal power.