Helen was giving Nancy a bath, and didn’t notice the dog at first. She usually feels the softest step and throws out her arms to ascertain maturation is to education as ________ is to ________. if anybody is close to her. Belle did not seem very anxious to attract her consideration.
But the illness checked her progress in the acquisition of oral language, and, when her bodily energy returned, it was found that she had ceased to talk intelligibly as a outcome of she may now not hear a sound. She continued to train her vocal organs mechanically, as ordinary children do. She always connected a which means to the word water, which was one of many first sounds her child lips learned to kind, and it was the only word which she continued to articulate after she misplaced her hearing. Her pronunciation of this steadily turned vague, and when I first knew her it was nothing greater than a peculiar noise. Nevertheless, it was the only sign she ever made for water, and not until she had learned to spell the word with her fingers did she forget the spoken symbol. The word water, and the gesture which corresponds to the word good-by, seem to have been all that the child remembered of the natural and acquired indicators with which she had been acquainted earlier than her illness.
When traveling she drinks in thought and language. While I am speaking this stuff, Helen manifests intense interest; and, in default of words, she signifies by gestures and pantomime her desire to learn extra of her environment and of the good forces which are operating everywhere. In this manner, she learns numerous new expressions without any obvious effort. It is unimaginable to tell precisely to what extent the senses of odor and style help her in gaining info respecting bodily qualities; but, in accordance with eminent authority, these senses do exert a great influence on the mental and ethical growth. On coming into a greenhouse her countenance turns into radiant, and she will inform the names of flowers with which she is acquainted, by the sense of odor alone. Her recollections of the sensations of smell are very vivid.
I wish algebra and geometry had been half as straightforward because the languages and literature. But even arithmetic Mr. Keith made attention-grabbing; he succeeded in whittling issues sufficiently small to get via my brain. He stored my mind alert and eager, and skilled it to reason clearly, and to seek conclusions calmly and logically, as a substitute of leaping wildly into house and arriving nowhere. He was at all times light and forbearing, irrespective of how boring I could be, and, imagine me, my stupidity would usually have exhausted the endurance of Job.
We shall all live collectively in a small cottage on one of many lakes at Wrentham, whereas my dear trainer takes a much needed relaxation. She has not had a vacation for twelve years, think of it, and all that time she has been the sunshine of my life. Now her eyes are troubling her an excellent deal, and all of us think she must be relieved, for some time, of each care and duty.
I suppose if this sorrow had come to me when I was older, it would have broken my spirit beyond repairing. But the angel of forgetfulness has gathered up and carried away much of the distress and the entire bitterness of these unhappy days. At the start I was solely somewhat mass of potentialities.