hick; cuticle insensitive; unable to
understand words or gestures perfectly; generally indifferent; found
1784.[104]

k) The Girl of Songi. According to Rauber, this is one of the most
frequently quoted of feral cases. The girl came out of the forest near
Chalons in 1731. She was thought to be nine years old. She carried a
club in her hand, with which she killed a dog that attacked her. She
climbed trees easily, and made niches on walls and roofs, over which she
ran like a squirrel. She caught fish and ate them raw; a cry served for
speech. She showed an instinct for decorating herself with leaves and
flowers. She found it difficult to adapt herself to the customs of
civilized life and suffered many fits of sickness. In 1747 she was put
into a convent at Chalons. She learned something of the French language,
of domestic science, and embroidery. She readily understood what was
pointed out to her but always had certain sounds which were not
understood. She claimed to have first begun to reflect after the
beginning of her education. In her wild life she thought only of her own
needs. She believed that the earth and the trees produced her, and her
earliest memory of shelter was of holes in the ground.[105]

2. From Solitude to Society[106]

The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my
teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me. I am filled with wonder
when I consider the immeasurable contrast between the two lives which it
connects. It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was
seven years old.

The morning after my teacher came she led me into her room and gave me a
doll. The little blind children at the Perkins Institution had sent it
and Laura Bridgman had dressed it; but I did not know this until
afterward. When I had played with it a little while, Miss Sullivan
slowly spelled into my hand the word "d-o-l-l." I was at once interested
in this finger play and tried to imitate it. When I finally succeeded in
making the letters correctly I was flushed with childish pleasure and
pride. Running downstairs to my mother I held up my hand and made the
letters for doll. I did not know that I was spelling a word or even that
words existed; I was simply making my fingers go in monkey-like
imitation. In the days that followed I learned to spell in this
uncomprehending way a great many words, among them _pin_, _hat_, _cup_
and a few verbs like _sit_, _stand_, and _walk_. But my teacher