with another boy. Like Laura Bridgman, this young child was deaf,
and dumb, and blind.

Dr. Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so very
striking, and so intimately connected with Laura herself, that I
cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise that the poor
boy's name is Oliver Caswell; that he is thirteen years of age; and
that he was in full possession of all his faculties, until three
years and four months old. He was then attacked by scarlet fever;
in four weeks became deaf; in a few weeks more, blind; in six
months, dumb. He showed his anxious sense of this last
deprivation, by often feeling the lips of other persons when they
were talking, and then putting his hand upon his own, as if to
assure himself that he had them in the right position.

'His thirst for knowledge,' says Dr. Howe, 'proclaimed itself as
soon as he entered the house, by his eager examination of
everything he could feel or smell in his new location. For
instance, treading upon the register of a furnace, he instantly
stooped down, and began to feel it, and soon discovered the way in
which the upper plate moved upon the lower one; but this was not
enough for him, so lying down upon his face, he applied his tongue
first to one, then to the other, and seemed to discover that they
were of different kinds of metal.

'His signs were expressive: and the strictly natural language,
laughing, crying, sighing, kissing, embracing, &c., was perfect.

'Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his faculty of
imitation) he had contrived, were comprehensible; such as the