This work was full of inaccuracies and mistakes, so that it became the prey of critics.
Finally, Napoleon I. wrote much, but not in the way of bookmaking, though he began a history of Corsica, which remained in MS. His writings have been collected and published in five volumes, under the title, OEuvres de Napoléon Bonaparte. 8vo. 1821.
From The Lamp.
HISTORY OF A BLIND DEAF-MUTE.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. CARTON,
HEAD OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB AT BRUGES,
BY CECILIA CADDELL.
Anna, the deaf, dumb, and blind girl, whose story I am about to relate, was born at Ostend, of poor but honest parents, in the year 1818. She was blind from her birth, but during the first years of her infancy appeared to have some sense of hearing. This, unfortunately, soon vanished, leaving her blind, deaf, and dumb; one of the three persons thus trebly afflicted existing at this moment in the province of West Flanders. Losing both her parents while still an infant, she was brought up by her grandmother, who received aid for the purpose from the "Commission des Hospices" of the town. To the good offices of these gentlemen she is likewise indebted for the education she has since received; for when I first proposed taking her into my establishment, both her aunt and her grandmother were most unwilling to part with her, fearing, very naturally, that strangers would never give her the affectionate care which, in her helpless condition, she so abundantly required; they only yielded at last to the representations and entreaties of their charitable friends. Their love for this poor child, who could never have been anything but an anxiety and expense to them, was indeed most touching; and they wept bitterly when they parted from her; declaring, in their simple but expressive language, that I was taking away from them the blessing of their house. They were soon satisfied, however, that they had acted for the best; and having once convinced themselves of her improvement both in health and happiness, they never, to the day of their death, ceased to rejoice at the decision which they had come to in her regard. When Anna was first entrusted to my care, her relations, and every one else who knew her, supposed her to be an idiot, and this had been their principal reason for opposing me in my first efforts for her instruction. Poor themselves and ignorant, and earning their bread by the labor of their own hands, they had had neither time nor thought to bestow on the development of this intellect, closed as it was against all the more ordinary methods of instruction; and the child had been left, of necessity, to her own resources for occupation and amusement. Few, indeed, and trivial these resources were! Blind, and fearing even to move without assistance; deaf, and incapable of hearing a syllable of the conversation that was going on around her; dumb, and unable to communicate her most pressing wants save by that unearthly and unwilling cry which the deaf mutes are compelled to resort to, like animals in the moment of their utmost need,—the child had remained day after day seated in the same corner of the cottage. Knowing nothing of the bright sunshine, or the green field, or the sweet smell of flowers; nothing of the sports of childhood or its tasks; night the same as day in her estimation, excepting for its sleep; winter only distinguished from summer by the sharper air without, and the increased heat of the wood-piled fire within—no wonder that she seemed an idiot. Her only amusement—the only thing approaching to occupation which her friends had been able to procure her—consisted, at first, in a string of glass beads. These Anna amused herself by taking off and [{327}] putting on again at least twenty times a day; and this and the poor meals, which she seemed to take without appetite or pleasure, were the only breaks in the twelve long hours of her solitary days. Some charitable person at last made her a present of a doll; and with this doll she played, after her own fashion, until she was twenty years of age. She never, in fact, lost her taste for it until she had succeeded in learning to knit; then it was cast from her with disdain, and she never afterward recurred to it for amusement.
Notwithstanding her enforced inaction, she managed to tear her clothes continually. Perhaps, poor child, she found some relief from the tedium of her daily life in this semblance of an occupation, for she had an insuperable objection to changing her tattered garments; and it was a long time before we could induce her to do so with a good grace. Once, however, accustomed to the change, she seemed to take pleasure in it, delighted in new clothes, and used often to come of her own accord to beg that the old ones might be washed. There was nothing very prepossessing in her external appearance; at first it was almost repulsive. She was of the ordinary height of a girl of her age; but her hands were small and thin, from want of use, as those of a little child. When she first came to my establishment her head was bowed down on her neck from weakness; she had sore eyes; her face was covered with a cutaneous eruption; she walked with difficulty, and appeared to dislike the exertion excessively. Afterward, care and good feeding improved her very much. She acquired strength; and the skin disease which had been her chief disfigurement entirely disappeared. I have no intention of describing all that she did and said (by signs), or all the pains and trouble that she cost us in the early months of her residence among us. During that time, however, I kept a journal of her conduct; which, as a history of her mental development, is so curious, that I venture to lay some extracts from it before my readers, the remainder being reserved for future publication.
I must begin by explaining my ideas as to the proper method to be pursued in instructing these unfortunates. I try, in the first place, to put myself in the place of a person deaf, blind, and dumb; and then ask myself, "What do I know, what can I know, in such a state?" In my first course of instruction, therefore, I make it a rule never to give the word until certain that the thing which that word expresses has been clearly understood. In the case of Anna there was an additional difficulty. Not only had she no' preconceived idea of the use or nature of a word, but her blindness prevented her seeing the connection between it and the substance it was intended to represent. Nor would it be sufficient for her full instruction that she should learn by the touch to distinguish one word from another; she would also require to be taught the elements of which words were themselves composed. If I began by giving her words alone, she would never have learned to distinguish letters. If, on the other hand, I commenced with letters, without attaching any especial idea to them, she would have been disgusted, and have left off at the second lesson. A letter, in fact, would have been nothing but a letter to her; for there would be no means of making her comprehend that it was but the first step toward the knowledge I was desirous of imparting. I resolved, therefore, neither to try letters by themselves nor whole words in the first lesson which I gave her. It was in the Flemish language, of course; but the method I pursued would be equally applicable to any other.
In order to give, at one and the same moment, the double idea of a letter and a word, I chose a letter which had some resemblance to the form I intended it to express, and gave it the significance of an entire word. For [{328}] this purpose I fixed upon the letter O, and made her understand that this letter signified mouth, in fact it is one of the four letters which express the word in Flemish—mond, mouth. Afterward I took a double o(00), which are the first letters in the Flemish, oog, eye. One O, then, signified mouth; two meant eyes. The lesson was easy; she caught it in a moment; and thus, with two words and two ideas attached to them, her dictionary was commenced. It was quite possible, however, that as these letters represented, to a certain extent, the objects of which they were the expression, she might fall into the error of supposing that all letters did the same; and in order to prevent this mistake, I immediately added the letter R to her collection.
This not only became a new acquisition for her dictionary, but, by forming with the two previous letters the Flemish word oor (ear), it became an easy transition between the natural expression dependent on the form, which she had already acquired, and the arbitrary, dependent on the spelling, which it was my object she should acquire. Proceeding on this principle, and always taking care to commence the lesson from a point already known, we lessened the difficulties, and made rapid progress. A cap, an apron, a ribbon, or gown, always interest the sex; and, like any other girl, Anna valued them extremely. I took care likewise often to choose words expressive of anything she liked, especially to eat; and it was by the proper use of these words that she first convinced me how completely she had seized upon the meaning of my lessons. Whenever she was desirous of obtaining any little dainty, she used to point to the word in her collection; and of course it was given to her immediately. Poor child! her joy, when she found she could really make herself understood, was very touching; and her surprise was nearly equal to her joy.