The Catholic World Volume I Part 47

_"Madame, tout asetheure (a cette heure), yn sy (ainsi) que je me vouloys mettre o lyt (au lit), est aryce (arrive) Laval, lequel m'a aporte la sertenete (cert.i.tude) deu levemant du syege de Mesyeres."_

I presume a schoolboy would be whipped if he wrote as bad a letter as this king.

Louis XIII. had, says his epitaph, "a hundred virtues of a valet, not one of a master;" but he could write sonnets, and compose the music for them. The best, perhaps, is that composed on, or for, Madame de Hautefort,--

"Tu crois, bean soleil!

Qu'a ton eclat rien n'est pareil; Mais quoi! tu palis Aupres d'Amaryllis,"

--set to music which is charming. But Louis XIII. was more of a barber, gardener, pastrycook, and farmer, than an author.

Louis XIV., beside his translation of Caesar's Commentaries, Book I., composed _Memoires historiques, politiques, et militaires;_ but his writings were not remarkable, as his education had been so neglected by his mother and Mazarin, that, according to La Porte, his valet, he was not allowed to have the history of France read to him, even for the sake of sending him to sleep.

Louis XV. wrote a little treatise on the course of the rivers of Europe, and printed it with his own hands. It consisted of sixty-two pages, and contained nothing which was not perfectly well known before, as, for instance, that the Thames ran into the North Sea or German Ocean, and that the Rhone actually fell into the Mediterranean.

In 1766 appeared a description of the forest of Compiegne, and guide to the forest, by Louis, afterward Louis XVI., composed by the unfortunate prince at the age of twelve.

Louis XVIII. wrote an account of a journey from Paris to Coblentz, which was published in 1823.

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 t.i.tle, _OEuvres de Napoleon Bonaparte._ 8vo. 1821.

{326}

From The Lamp.

HISTORY OF A BLIND DEAF-MUTE.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. CARTON, HEAD OF THE INSt.i.tUTE 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 princ.i.p.al 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

Few, indeed, and trivial these resources were! Blind, and fearing even to move without a.s.sistance; 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 amus.e.m.e.nt--the only thing approaching to occupation which her friends had been able to procure her--consisted, at first, in a string of gla.s.s 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 appet.i.te 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

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 ap.r.o.n, a ribbon, or gown, always interest the s.e.x; 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.

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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 exact.i.tude. 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 amus.e.m.e.nt to her.

However silly in appearance might be the a.s.sociation 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 embarra.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed easily to the p.r.o.nouns, 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 repet.i.tion 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 const.i.tute our Flemish plural, several of the same sort of substantives were intended to be expressed; and pa.s.sing 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 p.r.o.nouns "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 ap.r.o.n is square."

One last observation I must make about the p.r.o.nouns. The third person singular or plural would have been difficult to Anna, since, being blind, she could not have distinguished whether the action spoken of had been done by one person or by several; by "him," in fact, or by "they." The p.r.o.nouns which she can most readily comprehend are the first and second; and to these I generally confine her. For "he" or "they" I have subst.i.tuted "one:" "One strikes the table."

Anna might have been taught the others; but she would often probably have been mistaken in their application, and would perhaps have ended by supposing that there was no positive rule in their regard, and that they might be used as it were at random.

People only learn willingly what they can clearly comprehend; and if children dislike instruction, the fault is almost always with the master. If the latter would but bring his intelligence to the level of his pupils, he might be almost certain of their attention.

To sum up the whole, I will give the order in which I taught her the different parts of speech necessary for the knowledge of a language.

The substantive, because, being itself an object, it falls more immediately beneath the {331} recognition of the senses; the verb, because by the verb alone we speak, and without it there could be no language; the preposition, because it indicates the nature of the action expressed by the verb; and finally, the adjective and the adverb. I had many reasons for keeping back these two last to the end.

Neither of them is essential to a phrase which can be complete without them. Anna would have been much r.e.t.a.r.ded in her progress if I had stopped to teach her the attributes of words, when words themselves were what she wanted. She could learn language only by use and habit; and it was of the highest importance that she should acquire that habit as speedily as possible. I threw aside, therefore, without hesitation, all that could embarra.s.s her progress, and confined myself, in the first instance, to such things as it was absolutely essential she should know, in order to be able to converse at all. It may be asked why I taught her to make phrases by means of whole words, instead of giving her the letters of the alphabet and teaching her to make words themselves. The result of the mode I did adopt must be my answer. Anna has already a clear idea of language; all her acquisitions in the way of words are cla.s.sed in her mind as in a dictionary, and ready to come forth at a moment's notice. The reason for this rapid progress is very plain. It is far less troublesome to take a whole word, and put it in the grammatical order it ought to occupy, than to be obliged to make the word itself by means of separate letters. She had need of all her attention to learn the elements of a phrase; and it would have been imprudent to weaken that attention by directing it also to learn the elements of words. I divided difficulties in order to overcome them: this was the secret of my method, and the cause of its success. My lessons were also almost or entirely an amus.e.m.e.nt to her; and sometimes I composed a phrase which she first read, and acted afterward. Sometimes it was I who performed the action, while she gave me an account of what I had done in writing.

It was a lesson at once in reading and in writing, in hearing and in speaking; and the moment we had got thus far, communication by means of language was established between us. I had given my lessons at first by words or phrases written in a book; but now, to test more perfectly the knowledge she had acquired, and to prevent her reading becoming a mere matter of form and guess-work, I cut all her phrases into words, gummed them upon cardboard, and threw them pell-mell into a box, from which she had to take out every separate word that she required for a phrase. This new exercise vexed her very much at first; but if it was tedious, it was also sure. By degrees she became accustomed to it, and at last seemed to prefer it to the book, probably because it admitted of greater facilities for varying her phrases. Nevertheless it was troublesome work; and I was curious to see if Anna would seek, of her own accord, to arrange her words in such a way as to avoid the trouble of hunting through the whole ma.s.s for every separate one she wanted. It seemed not unlikely, for she was very ingenious; and so, in fact, it happened.

From time to time I observed that she put aside certain words, and kept them separate from the others; and it was impossible to mistake her exultation when these selected words were called for in her lesson. Of course I saw them as she put them by; and, in order to encourage her, I managed to introduce them pretty often into our conversations. Acting also upon this hint, I had a drawer divided into small compartments placed in the table at which she took her lessons.

Each compartment was intended for a separate cla.s.s of words, but she was permitted to arrange them according to her own ideas; and the moment a word had been examined and understood, she placed it in the compartment to which she imagined it belonged. Nouns, p.r.o.nouns, verbs, articles--each {332} had their separate part.i.tion; but I observed, with delight, that when I gave her the verb "to drink," instead of placing it with the other verbs, she put it at once into the compartment she had destined for liquids. Having remarked that it was always employed with these substantives, it naturally struck her that its proper place would be among them. To casual observers this may seem but a trifling thing to mention, but it was an act of reasoning; and in their half-mutilated natures the whole power of instruction hangs so entirely on the capacity for pa.s.sing by an act of reason from one fact to another, from the known to that which is still unknown, that every indication which a pupil gives of possessing such capacity is hailed with delight by her teacher as an a.s.surance of further progress.

Without it he knows that instruction would be impossible.

When Anna was first introduced into my establishment, she evidently comprehended that she had fallen among strangers. She brought us her poor playthings, and insisted on our examining them attentively, for she was a baby still; a baby of twenty years of age indeed, but as anxious to be caressed and as requiring of notice as a child of two years old. When led in the evening to her bedside, she immediately began to undress herself, and the next morning rose gaily, showing herself much pleased with the good bed in which she had pa.s.sed the night. She made a little inclination of the head to the sister who waited on her, as if to salute her. At breakfast we observed that she ate with more cleanliness and propriety than is usual among the blind.

Her first regular lesson was to knit; and we found it far less difficult to teach her the st.i.tch itself than to habituate her to work steadily for a long time together. She had evidently no idea of making it the regular occupation of the day. She would begin by knitting a little; then she would undo or tear up all that was already done; and this would happen regularly over and over again at least twenty times a day. It was weary work at first; but after a time we managed to turn this dislike for continuous occupation into a means of teaching her more important things. The moment she threw aside her work, we took it up, and pretended to insist upon her continuing it; and then at last, when we saw that she was quite vexed and wearied out by our solicitations, we used to offer her her letters. She would take them, and, evidently to avoid further worry, begin to study them; but the letters, like the knitting, were soon flung aside, and then the work once more was put into her hands. In this way, and while she fancied she was only indulging in her own caprices, we were advancing steadily toward our object--training her to occupation, and giving her the means of future communication with her fellow-creatures. We also discovered that it was quite possible to pique her out of her idle habits; for one day in the earlier period of her education, when she happened to be more than usually idle and inattentive, her mistress led her toward a cla.s.s of children busily employed in working, and said to her by signs, "These little children work; and you, who are twice their size, do you wish to sit there doing nothing?" From that time we had less trouble with her; and once she had learned to knit well and easily, this kind of work seemed to become a positive necessity to her. She delighted in feeling with her fingers the progress she was making, and the needles were scarcely ever out of her hands. When Sunday came, she asked as usual for her knitting, and was terribly disappointed when she found that it was withheld. I took the opportunity to give her an idea of time--a very important point in her future education; so I said to her, "You shall not knit _to-day;_ but after having slept once more--_to-morrow_ in fact--the needles shall be given to you again." I foresaw this to be an explanation that would need repeating; and {333} accordingly, the very next Sunday, she asked again for her knitting, and was again refused. She was vexed at first, but grew calm directly I had a.s.sured her she should have it "on the morrow."

Many weeks afterward, and when she seemed quite to understand that work on this day was forbidden, she came with a very serious countenance and demanded her knitting; then bursting into a fit of laughing, made signs that she knew she was not to knit on that day, but that to-morrow she should have her work again. She obtained a knowledge of the past and future much sooner than she did of the present, using the signs expressive of the two first long before she made an attempt even at the latter.

It was a matter of great importance that she should understand them all; therefore I not only introduced them over and over again in our conversations, in order to render her familiar with them, but I watched her carefully to see that she made a right use of them in her communications with her companions. A circ.u.mstance at last occurred which satisfied me that she was perfect in the lesson. On the feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga she went with the other children to a church where the festival was being celebrated. On her return she expressed her grat.i.tude for the pleasure she had received, and the next morning I observed that she told every one she met that "yesterday she had been to such a church;" while the day afterward I perceived that in telling the same story she made the sign of "yesterday" twice over--a proof how perfectly she comprehended the nature and division of time.

For a long time after she began to reside with us, she never mentioned either her grandmother or aunt, probably because she was so completely absorbed by the lessons of her new existence as to have no time to think of them. Gradually, however, they came back to her recollection, and then she spoke of them with grat.i.tude and affection. She began also to compare her present state with her past, evidently considering the change for the better in her physical and mental being as due to the care that has been bestowed on her here. She has twenty little ways of expressing her grat.i.tude. "My face was all over blotches," she says by signs; "I could neither write nor walk; now I can hold myself upright, and I can read, and know how to knit." This consciousness, however, does not at all interfere with her affection for her grandmother; and when the old woman died she grieved for some time bitterly. What idea does the word "death" bring to the mind of this child? I know not; but when we told her about her grandmother, her mistress made her lie down on the floor, and then reminded her of a child who had died in the establishment about a year before; after which we explained to her that the body would be laid in the ground, and be seen upon earth no more. She wept a great deal at first; but suddenly drying her tears knelt down, making signs to her mistress and companions that they should do the same; and, that there might be no mistake about her meaning, she held up her rosary, to show them they must pray. She did not forget her poor grandmother for a considerable time, and every morning made it a point to inquire from her companions if they also had remembered her that day. One of her aunts died about the same time, leaving to Anna as a legacy a portion of her wardrobe.

Anna's attention instantly became concentrated upon this new acquisition, and gowns and handkerchiefs underwent a minute and searching examination. The gowns pleased her exceedingly; so also did some woollen pelerines, which she instantly observed must be intended for the winter. At that moment she was a complete woman, with all a woman's innate love of dress and desire for ornamentation. "Are there not also ear-rings?" she asked, anxiously; and being answered in the negative, she expressed clearly, by her gestures, that it was a pity: it was quite a pity.