Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/76

72 unusual conditions. Signs were developed by mutual suggestion between her and her family. "A shake of the head meant 'No' and a nod, 'Yes,' a pull meant 'Come' and a push, 'Go.' Was it bread that I wanted? Then I would imitate the acts of cutting the slices and buttering them. If I wanted my mother to make ice-cream for dinner I made the sign for working the freezer and shivered, indicating cold." "I understood a good deal of what was going on about me. At five I learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought in from the laundry, and I distinguished my own from the rest. I knew by the way my mother and aunt dressed when they were going out, and I invariably begged to go with them." She played with the children about her and thus records how she did it. "I could not tell Martha Washington when I wanted to go egg-hunting, but I would double my hands and put them on the ground, which meant something round in the grass, and Martha always understood. When we were fortunate enough to find a nest I never allowed her to carry the eggs home, making her understand by emphatic signs that she might fall and break them." Writing at the age of ten, she says: "When I was a very little child I used to sit on my mother's lap all the time, because I was very timid, and did not like to be left by myself. And I would keep my little hand on her face all the while, because it amused me to feel her face and lips move when she talked with people. I did not know then what she was doing, for I was quite ignorant of all things. Then when I was older I learned to play with my nurse and the little negro children, and I noticed that they kept moving their lips, just like my mother, so I moved mine too." Here is another recollection of her childish play: "My aunt made me a big doll out of towels. It was the most comical, shapeless thing, this improvised doll, with no nose, mouth, ears or eyes—nothing that even the imagination of a child could convert into a face. Curiously enough, the absence of eyes struck me more than all the other defects put together. I pointed this out to everybody with provoking persistency, but no one seemed equal to the task of providing the doll with eyes. A bright idea, however, shot into my mind, and the problem was solved. . . . I found my aunt's cape which was trimmed with large beads. I pulled two beads off and indicated to her that I wanted her to sew them on my doll. She raised my hand to her eyes in a questioning way, and I nodded energetically." Obviously the little girl's mind was developing, though doubtless with far greater slowness and difficulty than would have been the case under more normal circumstances. Her moral training under the natural indulgence to one so afflicted suffered; and fits of passion and a lawless disregard of social amenities were a frequent occurrence.

It was through Charles Dickens's account of Laura Bridgman,