Page:The education of the deaf and dumb practically considered.djvu/14

 knowledge. By the advice of her medical attendant, I did not instruct her in the manual language, as hopes were entertained that her hearing might be restored.

At first her progress was very slow; she had only one hour's lesson per day, and though she soon learned to know and imitate written characters, they were of the largest text, her sight being too feeble to trace others. Every word, every lesson that she learned I had to write for her, for I knew of no book suited to her capacity of a sufficiently large type for her to read.

The words she knew and used were so few, that I kept a list of them, adding continually those I taught her, and composing phrases to impress them on her mind, which were read and written repeatedly. She never made use of a conjunction, nor for some time of any article; her only pronouns were me and you; she always spoke of her relatives by name. Her only method of negation was shaking the head; she had no idea of a past or future tense; and her adjectives were so few that good and bad were not reckoned among them. In fact, names of visible forms and actions were all memory had retained, and it was long ere I could convey an abstract idea to her mind. Gradually her sight improved, and with it by slow degrees the means of receiving knowledge; but, as yet, I only held the key of her understanding, she could not communicate with others.

It may be asked why I did not adopt systems of instruction already established, why I did not benefit by the experience of my predecessors? My answer is, that I sought the assistance of one well capable to give it, and his advice, well meant and most kindly given, served only to discourage an attempt which, he said, had been often tried