emed restored, and she was able to enter upon her apprenticeship of
life and the world. But what a situation was hers! The darkness and the
silence of the tomb were around her;--no mother's smile called forth her
answering smile; no father's voice taught her to imitate his sounds:
brothers and sisters were but forms of matter which resisted not her
touch, but which differed not from the furniture of the house save in
warmth and in the power of locomotion, and not even in these respects
from the dog and the cat.

But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within her could not
die, nor be maimed, nor mutilated; and, though most of its avenues of
communication with the world were cut off, it began to manifest itself
through the others. As soon, as she could walk she began to explore the
room, and then the house. She became familiar with the form, density,
weight, and heat of every article she could lay her hands upon. She
followed her mother, and felt her hands and arms as she was occupied
about the house; and her disposition to imitate led her to do everything
herself. She even learned to sew a little, and knit. The reader need
scarcely be told, however, that the opportunities of communicating with
her were very, very limited, and that the moral effects of her wretched
state soon began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason
can only be controlled by force; and this, coupled with her great
privations, must soon have reduced her to a worse condition than that of
the beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped-for aid. At this time
I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and immediately hastened to
Hanover to see her. I found her with a well-formed figure, a
strongly-marked, nervous-sanguine temperament, a large and
beautifully-shaped head, and the whole system in healthy action. The
parents were easily induced to consent to her coming to Boston; and on
the 4th October, 1837, they brought her to the Institution. For a while
she was much bewildered; and after waiting about two weeks, until she
became acquainted with her new locality and somewhat familiar with the
inmates, the attempt was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs,
by which she could interchange thoughts with others. There was one of
two ways to be adopted--either to go on to build up a language of signs
on the basis of the natural language which she had already commenced
herself, or to teach her the purely arbitrary language in co