Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic by George Moore
page 72 of 83 (86%)
page 72 of 83 (86%)
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weeks: for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened room. It was a
year before she could walk unsupported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely destroyed, and consequently that her taste was much blunted. It was not until four years of age that the poor child's bodily health seemed 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 |
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