120 VOCAL LANGUAGE OF LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 



ence is therefore justified, that an intelh'gent mind, capable of com- 

 prehending and using the forms and laws of structure involved in the 

 relations of language to the innate perceptions of individuality, time, 

 place, and all other discriminating niceties of what we call grammar, 

 was an endowment of primeval man : fitting him for developing the 

 associative relations of sound into a vocabulary expanding with his 

 growing knowledge and intellectual requirements. 



But, in addition to the attempts at the formation of a vocal lan- 

 guage which have been noticed in the case of the remarkable blind 

 and deaf-mute, Laura Bridgeman, some valuable indications of the 

 instinct of language may be derived even from her mute signs. She 

 exhibits all the impulsive manifestations of feeling : smiling, laughing, 

 blushing, shuddering, and weeping. She gives the imperative stamp 

 of the foot, the afiirmative nod, the negative shake of the head, and 

 other familiar signs of mental action, which she has not acquired, and 

 cannot conceive of as perceptible to others. '*When Laura is aston- 

 ished or amazed," Dr. Lieber remarks, "she rounds and protrudes her 

 lips, opens them, breathes strongly, spreads her arms, aad turns her 

 hands with extended fingers upwards, just as wo do when wondering 

 at something very uncommon. I have seen her biting her lips with 

 an upward contraction of the facial muscles when roguishly listening, 

 at the account of some ludicrous mishap, precisely as lively persons 

 among us would do. * * * When Laura once spoke to me of her own 

 crying, when a little child, she accompanied her words with a long 

 face, drawing her fingers down her face, indicating the copious flow of 

 tears ; and when, on New Year's Day of 1844, she wished in her mind 

 a happy new year to her benefactor, Dr. Howe, then in Europe, she 

 involuntarily turned towards the east, and made with both her out- 

 stretched arms a waving and blessing motion, as natural to her as it 

 was to those who first accompanied a benediction with this symphe- 

 nomenon of the idea, that God's love and protection might descend 

 in the fullness of a stream upon the beloved fellow-being." In its 

 touching pathos, this expressive benediction of the blind and deaf-mute 

 surpasses that last farewell of " the blameless king," and Guinevere, 



when 



" Sbe felt the king's brealh wander o'er her neck, 

 And, in the d..ikuess, o'er her fallen head, 

 Perceived the waving of his hands that blest." * 



* Idylls of the King. 



