Her delicacy of touch is in fact surprising. I have often effaced her letters, and flattened them with my nail until it seemed impossible to discover even a trace of them, and yet with her finger she has never failed in following out the form. She often also finds pins and small pieces of money, and picks them up when walking. She is very proud on these occasions, and takes good care to inform any one who comes near her of the fact. She is very active now, and always ready to go and look for any thing or person that she wants; and if she does not succeed in finding them, she engages one of her companions to aid her in the search. She seemed indeed always to suspect that we knew better than she did what was passing around us; though it was probably some time before she asked herself what the nature of her own deficiency might be. A day came, however, upon which she obtained some clearer knowledge on the subject; and this was the way it happened.
She had dropped one of her knitting-needles, and after a vain attempt to [{338}] find it for herself, she was obliged to have recourse to her mistress, who immediately picked it up and gave it back to her. Anna appeared to reflect earnestly for a moment, and then drawing the sister toward her writing-table, she wrote: "Theresa," naming one of the pupils of the institution—"Theresa is deaf; Lucy is deaf; Jane is blind; I am blind and deaf; you are—;" and then she presented her tablets to the sister, in order that the latter might explain to her the nature of that other faculty which she possessed, and which enabled her to find so easily anything that was lost.
This was a problem which had evidently occupied her for a long time; and with her head bent forward and fingers ready to seize the slightest gesture, Anna waited eagerly for the answer by which she hoped the mystery would be solved to her at last. In a second or two the embarrassment of the mistress was nearly equal to the eagerness of the pupil; but after a minute's hesitation she, with great tact, resolved to repeat the action which had caused Anna's question. Making the blind-mute walk down the room with her, she desired her once more to drop her needle and then to pick it up again, after which she wrote upon the board, "The needle falls; you touch the needle with your hand; you pick it up with your fingers." Anna read these words with an air which seemed to say, "I know all that already; but there must be something more;" and so there was.
Her mistress made her once more drop her needle; and then, just as Anna was stooping to pick it up, she dragged her, in spite of the poor girl's resistance, so far from it that she could not touch it either with her hands or feet. "It is ever so far away," Anna said, in her mute language; and stooping down to the floor, she stretched out her hand as far as ever it would go in a vain attempt to reach it. The sister waited until she was a little pacified, and then wrote: "The needle falls." Anna answered: "Yes." "The needle is far off," the sister wrote again; and Anna replied: "Alas, it is." "Sister N. cannot touch the needle with her hand." "Nor I either," Anna wrote in answer. "Sister N. can touch the needle with her eyes." Then followed a mimic scene, in which the thing expressed by words was put into action. Anna understood at last; but, evidently in order to make certain that she did, she desired the sister to guide her hand once more to the fallen needle. Her mistress complied with her request, and Anna was convinced. The experiment was repeated over and over again. Anna threw her needle into various places, and then asked the sister if she could touch it without stooping. "Yes," replied her mistress; "I touch the needle with my eyes." "Can you pick it up with your eyes?" asked Anna. The sister made her feel that her eyes were not fingers; and then once more picking up the needle she gave it to Anna, to be satisfied that she at last understood the nature of the faculty which her instructress possessed and which was wanting in herself.
From that time she invariably made a distinction between the blind children and those who were merely deaf-mutes. She had always hitherto been ready enough to avenge herself on any of her companions who struck her, whether accidentally or on purpose. Now if she found it was a blind child who had done so, she would of her own accord excuse her, saying, "She is blind; she cannot touch me with her eyes when I am at a distance from her." In the same manner, if she lost anything, she would ask the first deaf-mute whom she met to help her to look for it, while she never attempted to seek a similar service from any of the children whom she knew to be blind. She showed her knowledge of the difference between the two classes most distinctly upon one occasion, when her knitting having got irretrievably out of order, she communicated her perplexity to the [{339}] blind child at her side. The latter wanted to take it from her in order to arrange it; but Anna drew it back, and, touching first the eyes of the child and then her own, as if she would have said, "You also are blind, and can do no better than myself," she waited quietly until she could give it to the mistress to disentangle for her.
Anna delights in telling her companions all her adventures, though she takes care never to mention her faults or their punishment. She will acknowledge the former if taxed with them, but she does not like to be reminded either of the one or of the other. "I have done my penance," she says: "it is past; you must not speak of it any more." With this exception she tells all that she has done or intends to do; and she is enchanted beyond measure when she can inform them that she has succeeded in playing a trick on her mistress. She will tell the story with infinite glee, and always contrives exceedingly well to put the thing in its most ridiculous light before them.
She was fond of milk, and observed, or was told, one day that a cup of milk had been given to a child who was sick. The next morning, while in chapel, she burst into tears. Her mistress led her from the class, and asked what was the matter. She coughed, showed her tongue, held out her hand, that the mistress might feel her pulse; in fact she was as ill as she could be, and excessively thirsty. A cup of milk was brought; and the medicine was so good, that five minutes afterward she managed to eat her breakfast with an excellent appetite. During the recreation that followed, she took care to explain to her companions the means by which she had procured herself the milk. A few days afterward she recommenced the comedy, and played it so well, that, thinking she really was ill, her mistress desired her to go to bed. This was more than she wished for; but she went upstairs, trusting, no doubt, that something would happen to extricate her from the dilemma. Her mistress went to see her; and finding her sitting on the side of the bed, asked why she did not get into it, as she had been desired. "Madame," said Anna, "it is very cold, but I should get warm if you would give me a cup of milk; that would cure me in no time; and a little bread and butter with it would also do me good." The sister then perceived how the case really stood, and answered promptly, "If you will get into bed you shall have the milk, but not the bread and butter. If, on the contrary, you prefer to go downstairs, you shall have the bread and butter, but not the milk. Which do you choose?" "Both," quoth Anna. But as both were not to be had, she was obliged to content herself with the amusement of telling her intended trick to her companions, which she did with many regrets that it had not been successful.
But though Anna likes to tell all these little schemes and adventures to any one who will listen to her; and though, if taxed with them by her mistress, she is quite ready to acknowledge them with a laugh, it is far otherwise when the action itself contains anything seriously contrary to honesty or justice. In that case she takes good care to be silent on the subject; and if silence is impossible, she endeavors, in all manner of ways, to explain it away or excuse it.
One day she entered the schoolroom before any of the other pupils, and finding that a piece of wire, belonging to the pedal of the piano, was loose, she broke it quite off, put it into her pocket, and returned triumphantly to her place. Her mistress, happening to be in the room at the moment, saw the whole affair, and placed herself in her way, in order that Anna might know she had been observed. She then asked her what she had put in her pocket, and Anna instantly replied that it was her beads. Her mistress gave her to understand that she was trying to deceive her, and made her touch, as a [{340}] proof, the other end of the wire which she had broken. She was evidently confused, and became as red as fire, but with marvellous adroitness managed to let the wire slip out of her pocket to the ground. She had, of course, no idea that it would make a noise in falling; and fancying that she had concealed the theft, continued positively to deny it. In order still better to prove her innocence, she then knelt down and began feeling all over the floor, until she had found the wire which she had dropped, and holding it up in triumph, said, by signs, "I will ask M. Carton to give it to me that I may make it into a cross for my beads."
In this way she is always being ingenious in finding excuses for her faults. Her mistress once complained of her knitting, and she immediately held up her needles, which were bent, as if she would have said, "How is it possible to knit with such needles as these?" Another day, feeling more idle than usual, and wishing to remain in bed, she made them count her pulse, and begged by signs that they would send immediately for M. Verte, the physician of the house. We knew well it was only a trick to stay a little longer in bed, and she was the first to acknowledge it as soon as she had risen.