room and how many there are even when perfect silence is preserved. No meteorological changes escape his notice. Fair weather cheers him and dull weather depresses him, more than it does most of those who see. He identifies the birds by their chirps and carols, the flowers by their odors, shrubs by their leaves, trees by their bark, and fishes by their shape and fins. He is a critical musician and a piano tuner, plays chess, works a type-writer, keeps scores of ball games, and travels all over the country without a companion. Few habitues of the mountain streams which thread his native hills in western Massachusetts are more deft in casting a fly or worm, or handling a trout. Most remarkable of all, he has discovered that the gamut is prismatic and that sounds have color. Middle C, he says, is deep red, and each ascending note grows lighter by degrees until the highest becomes white; while the lower tones are graded in darker shades till the very lowest shows black.
Mr. Hawkes received a four years' course of instruction at the Perkins Institute in Boston. His study of elocution at that time has fitted him for the lecture platform which he adorns. He has also been a successful magazine writer. His poem "Erosion" took the fourth prize among two thousand competitors for the prizes offered by the Magazine of Poetry this year. His younger brother, it is due to say, has been his constant help as reader and amanuensis for several years.
It is half a century since the literary world possessed a blind poet. Percival of New Haven was the last. But Percival had not the refined intellectuality of the author of this volume. As yet it is too soon to define his position among the literati; but if "Pebbles and Shells" are an index, the Blind Poet of New England is destined to occupy a high place among the