138 Account of the Nuremberg Boy, Caspar Hauscr. 



son. One day, at length, the man clothed him, (it would ap- 

 pear that he wore only a shirt, his feet being bare), and taking 

 him out of the dungeon put shoes upon him. He carried him 

 at first, and then tried to make him learn to walk, directing the 

 young man's feet with his own. Sometimes carried and some- 

 times pushed forwards, he at length made a few steps. But, 

 after accomplishing ten or twelve, he suffered horribly, and fell 

 a crying. The man then laid him on his face on the ground, 

 and he slept. He is ignorant how long these alternations were 

 renewed ; but the ideas which he has since acquired have enabled 

 him to discover, in the sound of his conductor's voice, an ex- 

 pression of trouble and anguish. The light of day caused him 

 still greater sufferings. He retains no idea of his conductor's 

 physiognomy, nor does he even know if he observed it ; but 

 the sound of his voice, he tells us, he could distinguish among 

 a thousand. 



" Here ends the narrative, and we now come to the conversa- 

 tion. During the first days which he passed among men, he 

 was in a state of continual suffering. He could bear no other 

 food than bread. He wa^ made to take chocolate : he felt it, he 

 told us, to his fingers' ends. The light, the motion, the noise 

 around him, (and curious persons were not wanting to produce 

 the latter), and the variety of objects which forced themselves 

 upoq his observation, caused an indescribable pain, a phy- 

 sical distemper, but this distemper must have existed in the 

 chaos of his ideas. It was music that afforded him the first 

 agreeable sensation : it was through its influence that he expe- 

 rienced a dispersion of this chaos. From this period he was 

 enabled to perceive a commencement of order in the impressions 

 by which he was assailed. His memory has become prodigious : 

 he quickly learned to name and classify objects, to distinguish 

 faces, and to attach to each the proper name which he heard 

 pronounced. He has an ear for music, and an aptitude for 

 drawing. At first he was fond of amusing himself with wooden 

 horses, of which a present had been made to him, when he was 

 heard continually to repeat the word horses, beautiful horses 

 (rJss, sc/mietr^ss). He instantly gave up, when his master 

 made him understand that this was not proper, and that it was 

 not beautiful His taste for horses has since been replaced by a 



