A person born blind does not naturally make signs; for a sign addresses itself to the sight, and of the faculty of sight they have no conception. A sign in relief, however—a sign which they can distinguish by the touch, and by means of which they can communicate with their fellow-men—must come to these benighted intelligences like a message of mercy from God himself. We always gave Anna the object, in order to make her comprehend the word—the substance, to explain the substantive. One day, not long after her arrival, her instructress gave her the word egg, placing one at the same time before her; and Anna immediately made signs that she wished to eat it. She offered me at the same moment a small piece of money, which some one had given her, as if for the purpose of buying the food. The bargain was made at once; and she ate the egg, while I pocketed the money. I quite expected she would try this over again, for she had some money, and was fond of eggs. The very next day, in fact, she searched the word out in her vocabulary, and brought it to her instructress, with an air that quite explained her meaning. I placed an egg before her; she touched it—touched the word; coaxed and patted the egg; and at last burst into a fit of laughter, caused, no doubt, by pleasant astonishment at having so easily obtained her wish. I hoped and expected that she would propose to purchase, for I was anxious to find out if she had any real notion of the use of money. My hopes were fulfilled, for she offered at once her price of two centimes, with the evident intention of making a purchase. Much to her astonishment, however, this time I took both the money and the egg. At first she laughed, evidently thinking that I was only joking. I gave her time to comprehend that I was serious, and that, having taken both, I meant to keep them. She acquiesced at last with regard to the egg; it was mine, and I had a right to keep it if I liked; but she was indignant that I did not return the money. She asked for it in [{329}] every way she was capable of asking, and grew at last both red and angry at the delay. I had tried her sufficiently. It was high time to prove myself an honest man; so I gave her back her money, and she restored me to her good graces. I was happy indeed to find so clear a sense of justice, so complete a knowledge of the value of "mine" and "thine," in a creature so defective in her animal organization.
Once in possession of a little stock of words, Anna was never weary of augmenting it, and she soon found out a way of compelling us, almost, to satisfy her wish. She would take the hand of her mistress, and with it imitate the action of writing, by making points upon the paper with the finger. If her wishes were complied with, she was delighted; but if, to try her, the mistress pretended to hesitate, then Anna took the matter into her own hands, and positively refused to do anything else. Every other employment suggested to her would be indignantly rejected, and she would persist in asking over and over again for the word she wanted, never resting or letting any one else rest until she got it. The nuns, of course, always ended by complying with her desires; and it would be hard to say which felt most delight,—the blind girl, who had succeeded in adding to her small stock of knowledge, or the religious, who by the aid of Providence had enabled her to do so.
A mother who hears for the first time the low stammering of her child can alone form a conception of all one feels at such a moment, for God is very good; and when he imposed upon society the task of instructing the ignorant, he attached an ineffable delight to the accomplishment of that duty.
When Anna knew how to read and understand about forty substantives, I taught her the manual alphabet, and from that moment I could test her knowledge with unfailing exactitude. She first read the word with her fingers, and then repeated it by means of the dactology; it was a lesson in reading and writing both. She was soon sufficiently advanced to venture upon verbs. I began with the imperative mood; not only because it is the simplest form of the verb, but also because I myself would have to use it in giving her the lesson. She seized with wonderful facility upon the relative positions of the substantive and verb.
I always made her perform the action signified by the verb which she had learned, and thus the lesson became quite an amusement to her. However silly in appearance might be the association between the verb and substantive, she never failed to apprehend it; and when told to do anything ridiculous or out of the common way, she enjoyed the fun, and never failed to execute the commission to the best of her ability. If I told her to walk upon the table, she would take off her shoes, climb up, and walk cautiously upon it; if told to eat the chair, after a minute's hesitation as to the best manner of complying with the order, she would take it up and pretend to devour it. One day she was terribly embarrassed by some one writing the following phrase: "Throw your head on the floor." She read the sentence over and over again to make sure that she was not mistaken, laughed very much, and then suddenly growing serious, shook her head, as much as to say, the thing was absolutely impossible. At last, however, and as if to finish the business, she took her head in both her hands, and made a gesture, as if to fling it on the floor. Having done this, she evidently felt that nothing more could be expected from her, and showed herself both pleased and proud at having understood the phrase, and found so easy a method of getting out of the difficulty.
She distinguished very readily between the verbs "to lay down" and "to throw down," clearly comprehending that the one action was to be [{330}] done with vivacity, the other with caution; and it was curious to watch her perplexity when commanded to throw down anything liable to be broken. She knew well what would be the consequence of the command, and you could see the questioning that went on in her own mind as to how it could be accomplished with least damage to the article in question. She would begin by feeling all along the ground, and trying to form an exact idea of the distance it would have to fall; and then at last she would throw it down with a mixture of care and yet of caution, which showed she was perfectly aware of the mischief she was doing.
The moment she thoroughly understood the imperative, we had only to add her name or that of one of the sisters to produce the indicative; and then, by changing Anna into I, she passed easily to the pronouns, as thus: "Strike the table;" "Anna strikes the table;" "I strike the table." I had at first omitted the article; but I soon perceived my mistake. We have no means of teaching a deaf-mute the reason for preceding a substantive by an article; and still more impossible would it be to give any plausible explanation of the distinction between the genders. Habit does this for each of us when we learn our mother tongue; and habit and frequent repetition did it so well for Anna, that now she rarely, if ever, makes any mistake.
When she had advanced thus far, I made her observe that by adding the letters en, which constitute our Flemish plural, several of the same sort of substantives were intended to be expressed; and passing from this to numbers, I gave her a lesson in numeration. She readily seized upon both ideas; and constant practice soon made her perfect in their application.
Verbs such as jeter, to throw down, poser, to lay down, naturally introduced the use of prepositions to express the mode in which the verb acts upon the substantive. This enabled me to make various combinations with words known to her already; and I found it of great use to place the same word in such different positions in a phrase as to alter entirely, or at least modify, the meaning.
The last lesson which she received was to make use of and understand the meaning of the pronouns "my," "your," "our," and the conjunction "and." We have also made her comprehend the use and meaning of adjectives expressive of forms, as "square," "round," etc., as well as the physical and mental state of being implied in the words "good," "bad," "sick," "well," etc. She makes such phrases as the following, and reads them easily when they are given to her in writing: "Give me my knitting;" "My work is on the table;" "My apron is square."