Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/13

 allowed a pension for him, and he was placed with Thomas Fen, a respectable farmer in Hertfordshire. He was accustomed in the spring of the year to wander away, subsisting on the green buds of trees, &c. His adventure in Norfolk, during one of these excursions, has been related, to which we may add that he was saved from the consequences of his supposed contumacy by some person reading in a newspaper an advertisement describing the missing Wild Boy. To prevent the recurrence of such serious adventures, he was provided with a brass collar, on which was inscribed "Peter the Wild Boy, Broadway Farm, Berkhampstead." When Peter was angry, he never attempted to strike or use his hands in any way, but always endeavoured to bite. Pleasure he expressed by kissing the object that excited his admiration. When pleased he would also often dance about, shaking his brass collar, and making a humming noise which he intended for singing, but in which it was difficult to trace an air. Painting delighted him, and he would immediately kiss any object that was of vivid colours. He was passionately fond of music, and would endeavour to enter the room where any kind of music was performing, jumping and dancing to it. We have already described the extent of his vocabulary, to which he afterwards added "Hom Hen" (Tom Fen), intended for the name of the farmer whom he recognized as his master. Though quite harmless, Peter was sometimes sullen, and would never work if desired to do so; but, if nothing were said to him, he would often assist in the farm and do more work than three other men. He usually had bread and milk for supper, and as soon as he had taken it he always went up to bed; so that if he was wished out of the way, some bread and milk was given to him, and when he had finished it he would immediately go off to bed, even though it were still broad daylight. Peter could live on the simplest fare, but he much liked anything sweet, and any kind of confectionary. There is an anecdote, of his having made his way into a room where all the sweet things were laid out, that were prepared for a grand fête given to Lord Chatham; and when the second course was called for, Peter was discovered, with a large bowl, in which he had mixed pastry, jellies, creams, and other niceties, employed, quite to his own satisfaction, in eating the whole collection with his hands. Peter was capable of very sincere affection; for he became attached in an extraordinary manner to the farmer who succeeded Tom Fen in the charge of him; and when this person died, he went to his bed-side, raised his hands, and endeavoured to awaken him; but when he found his efforts unavailing, he went down stairs and seated himself by the chimney. What his ideas of death were, cannot be known; but he refused his food and pined away, till in a few days he actually died of grief, — for he never had any illness.

The Savage of Aveyron was found in the forest of Cawne in the year 1801, being, it was supposed, about eleven or twelve years of age. He was quite naked, and seeking acorns and roots for food, was met by three huntsmen who laid hold of him at the moment he was climbing a tree to avoid his pursuers. In 1802 he was taken to Paris, where he excited great curiosity, and his actions furnished occasion to observations of the most interesting nature.

Language is the expression of our ideas and their various relations by certain articulate sounds, which are used as the signs of those ideas and relations! By articulate sounds are meant, those modulations of simple voice emited from the thorax, which are formed by means of the mouth, and its several organs—the teeth—the tongue—the lips—and the