CHAPTER X. 



Boston. Blind Asylum and Laura Bridgeman. Respect for Freedom of 

 Conscience. Cemetery of Mount Auburn. Channing s Cenotaph. 

 Episcopal Churches. Unitarian Congregations. Eminent Preachers. 

 Progress of Unitarians why slow. Their Works reprinted in England. 

 Nothingarians. Episcopalian Asceticism. Separation of Religion and 

 Politics. 



DURING our stay at Boston we visited the Perkins Institution, or 

 Asylum for the Blind, and found Laura Bridgman, the girl who 

 has been blind, deaf and dumb from infancy, much grown since 

 we saw her four years ago. She is now sixteen, and looks very 

 intelligent. She was reading when we entered, and we were 

 told that formerly, when so engaged and alone, she used to make 

 with one hand the signs of all the words which she felt out with 

 the other, just as an illiterate beginner speaks aloud each sentence 

 as he spells it. But the process of conveying the meaning of the 

 words to her mind is now far too rapid for such delay, and the 

 hand not occupied in reading remains motionless. We were 

 afterward delighted to watch her while she was following the 

 conversation of two other dumb children who were using the 

 modern single-hand alphabet. She was able to comprehend all 

 the ideas they were exchanging, and to overhear, as it were, 

 every word they said, by making her fingers play, with fairy 

 lightness, over theirs, with so slight a touch, as not in the least 

 degree to interfere with the freedom of their motions. We saw 

 her afterward talk with Dr. Howe, with great rapidity and 

 animation, pointing out accurately the places on a map while he 

 gave a lesson in geography. She indulged her curiosity in exam 

 ining my wife s dress, and, taking her hand, told her which was 

 her wedding ring, and then began to teach her the deaf and dumb 

 alphabet. She is always aware whether it is a lady s hand she 

 touches, and. is shy toward a stranger of the other sex. As she is 

 now in communication with no less than a hundred acquaintances, 

 she has grown much more like other children than formerly. 



