GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE. 67 



the master refused harslily, and turned him out of the school. 

 His father made him kneel at prayers with the others, and he 

 imitated the joining of their hands and the movement of their 

 lips, but thought (as other deaf-and-dumb children have done), 

 that they were worshipping the sky. " I knew the numbers/' 

 he said, "before my instruction, my fingers had taught me 

 them. I did not know the figures ; I counted on my fingers, 

 and when the number was over ten, I made notches in a piece 

 of wood." When he was asked what he used to think people 

 were doing when they looked at one another and moved their 

 lips, he replied that he thought they were expressing ideas, 

 and in answer to the inquiry why he thought so, he said he 

 remembered people speaking about him to his father, and then 

 his father threatened to have him punished.' 



Kruse tells a very curious story of an untaught deaf-and- 

 dumb boy. He was found by the police wandering about 

 Prague, in 1805. He could not make himself understood, and 

 they could find out nothing about him, so they sent him to the 

 deaf-and-dumb Institution, where he was taught. When he 

 had been sufficiently educated to enable him to give accurate 

 answers to questions put to him, he gave an account of what 

 he remembered of his life previously to his coming to the In- 

 stitution. His father, he said, had a mill, and of this mill, the 

 furniture of the house, and the country round it, he gave a 

 precise description. He gave a circumstantial account of his 

 life there, how his mother and sister died, his father married 

 again, his step-mother ill-treated him, and he ran away. He 

 did not know his own name, nor what the mill was called, but 

 he knew it lay away from Prague towards the morning. On 

 inquiiy being made, the boy's statement was confirmed. The 

 poHce found his home, gave him his name, and secured his 

 inheritance for him.^ 



Even Laura Bridgman, who was blind as well as deaf-and- 

 dumb, expressed her feelings by the signs we all use, though 

 she had never seen them made, and could not tell that the by- 

 standers could observe them. She would stamp with delight, 

 and shudder at the idea of a cold bath. When astonished, she 

 * Sicard, ' Theorie,' vol. ii. p. 632, etc. ^ Kruse, p. 54. 



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