VOCAL LANGUAGE OF LAURA BRIDGEMAN. 121 



The use by Laura of the aifirmative nod, and the negative shake of 

 the head, has already been referred to. Even when indicating the yes 

 or no by means of her fingers, she involuntarily accompanies them with 

 those signs. She also uses the negative shake of the hand by which, 

 as it were, we repel an idea, and the abrupt movement of the head by 

 which aversion is expressed. "The Italians," says Dr. Lieber, "move 

 repeatedly the lifted digit from right to left, as a sign of negation, 

 while the modern Greeks throw back the head, producing at the same 

 time a chuckling noise with the tongue. Laura makes these signs 

 even without writing Yes or No in the hand of the person with whom 

 she converses: having learned, but not having been told, that some how 

 or other we perceive this sign, or that it produces upon us the desired 

 eifect ; altho\igh she is unable to solve the great riddle of the process 

 by which this is done. Laura, far below our domestic animals, so far 

 as the senses are concerned, but infinitely above them because she is 

 endowed with a human mind, had attained to the abstractions of afiir- 

 mation and negation at a very early age ; while no dog or elephant, 

 however sagacious, has been known to rise to these simple ideas, for 

 which every moment even of animal existence calls, wherever reflection 

 sways over the naked fact." Laura then, — while still with knowledge, 

 not as in Milton's case, at one entrance, but at all entrances quite shut 

 out, and without any possibility of conceiving of sound as audible or in 

 any other way perceptible by others, — felt nevertheless an instinctive 

 impulse to express her emotions and ideas, both by sign and sound. 

 Speech was struggling in her for the responsive union on which the 

 birth of language depends. Her interjectional utterances were wholly 

 independent of imitation ; onomatopoeic vocal-signs, if conceivable at 

 all in her case, can only occur as suggestions of the one sense of touch 

 by means of which she perceives the most delicate vibrations, and re- 

 cognizes a friend or stranger by his step. No phonetic types of lan- 

 guag,e can be discerned in her utterances ; but the growing association 

 of ideas with specific sounds, shows how thoroughly the rudiments of 

 language as a means of expressing, though not of interchanging thought, 

 appeared with the first response of recognition. Strange indeed, is it 

 to think how that imprisoned soul in its lonely solitude, may have 

 been giving audible expression to ideas, as full of meaning as the 

 prattling of an intelligent child ; and craving in vain the sympathetic 

 return, to which it at length responded with such grateful ardour. 

 Even now, when alone, she may be heard to utter the name-sound of 



