conversational side-dishes and pièces de résistance, day after day for so long, it was a positive relief to me to talk for an hour or two with this vivacious little black-eyed maiden, and never hear his name nor any of his deeds nor words.

At last I believed I was to be a happy man. Virginie evidently enjoyed and appreciated my society. May, bless her dear heart, resigned me to her friend without a single pang of wounded feeling. Virginie had only a guardian to consult, not an autocratic

brother. Mrs. Cary, I know, was planning what sort of a wedding to give her pretty protégée, and Mrs. Nichol began to consider whether she should wear lavender satin or white crape.

So with little fear of failure, I went gaily to my fate. Virginie blushed and looked the least in the world guilty: then she said airily: "Why, I can't marry you, because— not a soul knows it yet, and don't you tell for the world-I'm engaged to Fred Cary." Helen Lake.

LAURA BRIDGMAN's name is a household word; her education forty years ago was followed with the most eager and general interest, and her case has become a classic in psychological literature. To preface a short study of her writings with an account of her life and of the method of her education, may seem, to say the least, unnecessary. Still, current information is often inaccurate, and the psychological value of what she wrote depends so completely upon her condition before and after instruction, that a very brief review of the facts is here presented.

Laura Bridgman was born December 21st, 1829, into the family of a moral and respectable farmer of Hanover, New Hampshire. She inherited a rather sensitive nervous organization, the advantages and disadvantages of which are apparent in the record of her years of study in the Perkins Institute. She was born with her full quota of senses, but in her babyhood was subject to a nervous affection then known as "still fits," which for a time retarded her development. This, however, she outgrew in her first eighteen months, and from that time till she was two years old, she was considered a well child, and, under the circumstances, a bright one. She learned to talk a little, and knew a few of her letters. Just after her second birthday

she was taken sick with scarlet fever, and only after weeks of disease, and after two full years and more of feebleness, was her general health fairly reëstablished. The disease left her with hearing totally destroyed, and with sight so nearly in the same condition, that, though she continued for several years to distinguish light and darkness, and perhaps even to notice certain striking colors, she was found completely sightless, when, at about eight years of age, she was examined by Dr. S. G. Howe. Her senses of taste and smell were blunted, and touch alone of the five remained intact. By the use of this sense alone, or, we should say more truly, this undifferentiated complex of senses, she began to renew her acquaintance with the world, to satisfy her growing hunger of mind, and to communicate by the simplest signs with those about her. Between her fifth and her eighth years she learned

1 What is known to popular psychology as the single sense of touch, resolves itself upon more scientific examination into a complex of senses. Sensations of temperature, pressure, and muscular exertion, with othmaterial, so to speak, from which the higher senses have been developed. In picturing Laura's defective condition, it is well to remember how wide was the range of experience to be gained through this so-called single sense-certainly wider than that to be gained through any other of the five.

ers of a less distinct character, unite in it. It is the

something of tangible objects, something of the proprieties of conduct, to knit, to sew, to set the table, and to help a little about her home.

In her eighth year her case was brought to the notice of Doctor Howe, of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and through his influence she was brought to Boston and placed in that institution in October, 1837. There her formal education began.1 The first thing to be done was to come at a ready means of communication with her. Two ways were possible: the first, to develop the natural sign language, of which she already had the rudiments; the second, to teach her arbitrary language, using signs only while her knowledge of this was being established.

The second and more difficult way was chosen, as promising the larger results. Labels of raised letters were pasted on spoon, fork, or mug, and Laura was taught to associate the word-sign as a whole with the object that it represented. Next she was taught to form the word-sign from the simpler letter signs, by means of several sets of movable types, and a board in which they could be set up. The formation of words she quite readily learned, but weeks of steady work were necessary before she finally caught the meaning of it all. The manual signs of the mute alphabet were soon given her, the signs being made into her hand and followed by her fingers, and came to bear, perhaps, the same relation to the literal forms for her as the vocal sounds do for us. She learned at first only nouns, as the names of objects; later, verbs and adjectives of such actions and qualities as she could perceive. After a year she began to write, that is, to print, using a lead pencil and a grooved pasteboard under her paper to keep the lines, such as is commonly used by the blind. By degrees her vocabulary was increased by other parts of speech, by the inflectional forms of the

1 The best accounts of Laura Bridgman's education are to be found in Mrs. Lamson's book, Life and

Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman," and in Doctor Howe's Reports, from which she makes many extracts. The Reports are now, unfortunately, out of print, but it is probable that they, or some portions of them, will be republished in the near future.

verbs, and by new classes of words, including some verbs of mental action, "remember," "forget," and the like. Her language study was continuous from the beginning to the end of her formal teaching. Early in her course she also began arithmetic.

In June, 1841, two years and eight months after her entrance into the institution, Miss Mary Swift (later Mrs. Mary Swift Lamson) became her teacher, and continued as such for four years after the first year and a half, as her special teacher. In Laura's case the naturally close relation of teacher and pupil was made of necessity even closer; her teacher was with her almost constantly. She had to be told a thousand things that children with their eyes and ears learn for them. selves. She had lessons on trades, lessons in the barn and the pantry, lessons on the materials necessary to furnish a room. She took long walks for exercise with her teacher, and filled the time of them full, whenever the ground would permit, with manual conversation on subjects about which she was curious. In the same direct and personal way she was taught morals and manners. A part of her teacher's work was to read to her, using the mute alphabet. In this way some of Abbott's stories were read, and other books of a similar nature. She went on with her arithmetical studies under Miss Swift, completing Colburn's Mental Arithmetic in a year, and working at written arithmetic with the ciphering board. She studied geography considerably, and began grammar and elementary physics.

From 1845 to 1850 Laura's teacher was Miss Wight. The work of the previous years was for the most part continued as before, but greater attention was given to her religious teaching. She studied history and physiology, and something of algebra and geometry, and gave more time to her correspondence. Miss Wight was her last special teacher, and at her departure Laura's formal education may fairly be said to have ended., With the exception of a short interval, her home has continued to be at the Perkins Institute.

Considering her difficulties, Laura Bridg

man's attainments are phenomenal, but in her studying she has had as her ally a burning desire to learn. It has been said that in all her learning she probably never exceeded the tendency to spontaneous activity.

The detail of her education was executed by the faithful women that were her teachers, but to Dr. Howe belongs the credit of having devised the way, and, not only by supervision, but by actual work with her, of having helped her to what she is. It was his express desire that her religious instruction should be left to himself, and his plans were for such instruction as should lead one of her restricted experience by natural steps to a symmetrical Christian faith; but in this his wishes were not respected, and while nominally her sole religious instructor till she had been some time under Miss Wight's charge, he was not allowed to be so in fact.

The writings of Laura Bridgman are a journal, three autobiographical sketches, several so called poems, and numerous letters. The journal, with some intervals, covers a period of about ten years, 1841 to 1850. It consists of some forty or more thin manuscript books, of different shapes and sizes; some of the earlier being large folios, 14 x 101⁄2 inches; the later, except the very last, uniformly smaller, 121⁄2 x 9. The total number of pages, large and small, falls a little short of six hundred, and the whole, if set up in the type of the body of the OVERLAND, would cover about one hundred and ninety magazine pages. The matter of her record is at first only the routine of the institution, and the style, if style it may be called, very much that of a learner. The following are fair sample sentences of early date: "mary washed the many clothes." "i ate some cake good." "rogers taught me to talk good about all things very little." After she had acquired a greater facility of expression, the custom was for her to re-write each day in her journal what had been read to her the day before; and so, many pages are filled with rescripts of children's stories. So far her writing was nothing but school exercises;

it is only toward the very last that her entries come to have anything like maturity, and the interest of a personal diary. In these last books she records, besides the mere events of the day, an occasional bit of pleasantry, a play of fancy, her hopes and doubts of the future, and some evidence of her religious feeling. The manuscripts show the growth of her chirography from a sprawling and scarcely legible hand, to one of almost the clearness of print, a gradual increase in use of capital letters and punctuation, and an increasing mastery of language. On the whole, the journal cannot be said to contain much of interest to the general reader. In this respect the autobiographies are better. They deal exclusively with the interesting early portion of her life, for the most part with that before she came to Boston; and though they offer no new historical matter of any consequence, they have the peculiar interest of autobiography in a marked degree. In a most naïve way they open to the reader her early home life, and throw light by their style of thought upon the peculiarities of her maturer mind. Mrs. Lamson quotes at some length from one of these sketches, but in the preparation of her book she did not have the best and fullest of the three, the better part of which appears below.

In making the following abbreviation of it, the aim has been to omit only repetitions and passages of little biographical and psychological moment, and to present the remainder as it stands in the manuscript, except in the following particulars: Laura's paragraphing and punctuation have been somewhat changed in the interest of clearness. Paragraphing, being a kind of spacial separation of ideas, might seem to be a thing to appeal directly to one whose single active sense was one so well suited to the perception of space relations, yet she makes the breaks in her manuscript rarely and without discrimination. The further liberty has been taken of rearranging the incidents of her narration, because, though following in general a chronological order, in the more detailed ordering of them she seems to follow mere suggestion. One or two of the com

monest abbreviations, also, have been expanded.

The record begins with her attack of scarlet fever in 1832, and comes down to her visit to Mrs. Morton, her first teacher, in the winter of 1841. The sketch is dated by some hand other than Laura's, February 20th, 1854. If that date be correct, the author was at the time of writing a little more than twenty-four years old, and had been something over sixteen years at the Institute. Her style and her mastery of idiom, though more perfect than in her journal, except toward the very last, had not become finally fixed, and what is here found must not be taken as her highest attainment in these

matters.

Errors of three kinds are to be expected in her writings: first, simple graphical errors, such as every one makes, which are not surprising in the manuscript of one that could not revise what she had written, nor see the beginning of a sentence from the end; second, errors of simple ignorance, inexperience, or misinformation, arising from her misunderstanding of her teachers, or from a too general application of some of the rules of language; and third, errors resulting from mental peculiarity, if any such exist. Numerous examples of the first and second classes will be found in the following extracts :

"THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE.

"I should like to write down the earliest life extremely. I recollect very distinctly how my life elapsed since I was an Infant. But that I have had the vague recollection of my infancy. I was taken most perilously ill when I was 2 years and a half. I was attacked with the scarlet fever for three long weeks. My dearest M ther was so pain. fully apprehensive that there was great dan ger of my dying, for my sickness was so excessive. The Physician pronounced that I should not live much longer, my Mother had a watch over me in my great agony many nights. I was choked up for 7 weeks as I could not swallow a morsel of any sort of food, except I drank some crust coffee.

[Here "as "so that "; two or three times in one of the later books of her Journal she uses "as" somewhat similarly for “that.”] I was not conveyed out of the house for an instant for 5 months, till June or July. I was saturated with very bad sores on my chin and neck and on my lowest right leg and other parts of the body.

"As soon as I began to get a little better, it delighted my Mother very highly, who had been so gloomy watching me constantly. I used to recline in a very nice and comfortable cradle for a great number of months. I enjoyed myself so very much in lying in my nest. Many of different persons were very attentive and tender and patient to me whilst I resided with my Parents until I attained not exactly the eighth year.

"I fancied having a veil drawn along my poor head when ever I lay myself in the cradle. The light was so very brilliant and striking that I could not bear to see the reflection of the sun shine an instant once, because my tiny eyes were very weak and painful many months. [Referring probably to this "reflection"-i. e., the sunshine on the floor-Laura says in the sketch quoted by Mrs. Lamson: "It was from ignorance of the fact that I imagined that the sun always shone beneath, through the floor in my mother's kitchen upon which I reflect with my eye, near her right window."] It made the tears flow from my eyes like a heavy shower. I dropped down my head into my little hands as the ray of the light stung my eyelids like a sharpest needle or a wasp, my poor head and eyes continually tormented me so that I entered [in]to the snug bed chamber and staid there for a short time."

"My Mother set me so cautiously in a chair and tugged the chair along the floors on the two hind feet of the chair from the bedroom to the kitchen. I fancied to have her draw me backward in the hair very much indeed. My poor feet were wrapped in a poultice, and I made a great effort in sauntering so leisurely across the floor. My Mother took hold of my cunning hands to assist in supporting me to walk so feebly; it gave me some difficulty. I was so very restless and