ith civilized life, the intensity of all his faculties
diminished. It was so with his memory. He was at first able to exhibit
most surprising feats. As an experiment, thirty, forty, and, on one
occasion, forty-five names of persons were mentioned to him, which he
afterwards repeated with all their titles,--to him, of course, entirely
meaningless. So, too, with his power of sight. At first, he was able to
see in the dark perfectly well, and much better than in the light of the
sun, which was very painful to him. He very frequently amused himself
at others groping in the dark, when he experienced not the slightest
difficulty. On one occasion, in the evening, he read the name on a
door-plate at the distance of one hundred and eighty paces. This
keenness of vision did not, however, retain its entire vigor, but
decreased as he became more accustomed to the sun. For some time after
he made his appearance he had no idea of perspective, but would clutch
like a child at objects far off. Nor had he any conception of the
beauties of Nature, which he afterwards explained by saying that it then
appeared to him like a mass of colors jumbled together. Nothing was
beautiful, unless it was red, except a starry heaven,--and the emotion
which he felt, on first beholding this, was truly touching. Until then,
he had invariably spoken of "the man with whom he had always been" with
feelings of affection; he longed to return to him, and looked upon all
his studies as merely a temporary thing; some day he would go back and
show the man how much he had learned. But when he first looked upon the
heavens, his tone became entirely changed, and he denounced the man
severely for never having shown him such beautiful things.

All his senses were thus at first wonderfully keen. It was so with his
hearing and smell. The latter was the source of most of his sufferings;
for, being so exceedingly sensitive, even the most scentless things made
him sick. He liked but one smell, that of bread, which had been his only
food for seventeen years. It was a long time, indeed, before he could
take any other food at all, and he only became accustomed to it very
gradually.

The effect produced upon Caspar Hauser by contact with or proximity to
animals was also very curious. He was able to detect their presence
under singularly unfavorable circumstances. Metals, too, had a very
powerful effect upon him, and possessed for him a strong magnetic power.
But it is impossib