The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-07-08
LEARNED BLIND STUDENT

Remarkable Accomplishments of a Sight less Youth-He is a Fine Mathematician
 Ability to Garry Problems In his Mind
 Heads and Writes German-Very Alert
 Senses.
 From the San Francisco Chronicle.l
 Over in Berkeley at the State Univer- sity, and among its most successful stu dents, is a young man who has to rely upon four of the five avenues by which men gain information of the outer world, yet he has not only acquired great power as mathematician, req soner and a teacher, but he has actual ly gained more knowledge of external nature than great share of people possess.
 Newell Perry Is now twenty-one years of age, and has been totally blind since the age of nine, when bad case of poison oak left him sightless. His childhood had been that of the average healthy boy, except that his powers of observation were uncommonly eXer- cised, and his mind was well stored with pictures of sea and sky and hill and valley. These recollections of ear- ly years have been of inestimable value to him since his loss of sight, serving to guide and correct his conception of things which maturer studies have brought him.
 After his blindness young Perry was sent to the state institution for the blind, where he soon distinguished him. self as student. He had before &C., quired the ability to read and to han de simple figures. In his work under the teachers of the blind his misfortune served to intensity the senses left him. If he could now read with much less fa- ,cility than formerly, still reading came to mean much more to him. His mind was, free to throw all it's power into forming the conceptions suggested by the words. If he could not now man. age large numbers so readily by the use of written figures, he soon acquired the ability to carry and manipulate com paratively large numbers in his mind with marvellous accuracy and rapidity.
 Young Perry's advance from the in- stitpltion for the blind to city high school and thence to the State Univer- sity was rapid. In his later studies he has always employed reader to save time. He selects for this office a per- son who Is willing to be guided, who will be a passive instrument, and lite rally Tend his eyes" In these years his rank as a student has always been good-among the best, in fact; and in mathematics especially it has been ex- tremely high. The construction for the af, r,rNh1lro ro I, be drawn in his mind and held there while the comparisons are being made which lead to the solution. The pro- fundities of the differential and inte- gral calculus, 50 full of dread to most minds, are pleasures to mentality of 2 his grasp and concentration.
 An instance may illustrate young Parry's power. He requested a student to read to him several 1ogarithms which he wished to use, and three or four were read of fifteen figures each. Perry requested that they be read a second time, after which he went to his room to use the sixty figures, each in its proper place. It is an ordinary thing for him to work with an algebra ic expression of twenty terms, carrying it in his mind through all the changes of a mathematical computation.
 But not only in mathematics is Per rvs wonderful ability displayed He speaks reads and writes the German language. He is exceedingly well read in history and English literature. He is thorough student of the natural sciences, possessing the spirit of an in vestigator and the habit of strict req. soning. He is an excellent musician and, strange to say, q fair dancer.
 One. of the surprising powers pos sessed by Perry is his ability to direct his movements nearly or quite as vel as can the average man. Many per sons who meet him upon his rambles over the Berkeley hills or see him take the train for San Francisco or pass hin upon crowded Market street do not req lize that he has not the advantage O