I hated girls with contempt. I never played with them. I would not visit my friends who had girls at home. Why? Because from my accidental observation I found out the difference between the girls and boys, — not in dress, but in sex. This led me to despise female animals. When I was hungry, I might occasionally go to the women for foods, but I could not stay long with them. While at school, I retained this dislike three years before I could like a girl.
I cannot remember if I ever knew that I was deaf. I knew that I could not talk, but I never asked myself why, not because I was satisfied with my condition, but because I was too wide awake to think of my own self. I often wondered how others could speak, particularly while they were quarrelling. I believed that the people could never grow. I had never wanted to be a man, because I could do enough what I liked to. I seldom saw a baby. I hated it and thought it a dirty thing. I have still retained the dislike for babies. (I am single.)
This is all what I can say for the present. Mr. Wilkinson, when he was my teacher, used to make me write about what I did before I came to school. It helped me much thus to repeat the memory. Ever since my recollections have been the same, though the words have changed now and then to get better style and more definite meanings in language.
It shows that I thought in pictures and signs before I came to school. The pictures were not exact in details, but were general. They were momentary and fleeting in my mind's eye. The signs were not extensive but somewhat conventional after the Mexican fashion — not at all like the symbols of the deaf and dumb language. I used to tell my friends about some of my cosmology. Several of them encouraged me.
One always took so much interest in me that he attempted to teach me. But he knew almost nothing, only he could say yes or no with more or less emphasis in gestures, when I said in pantomimic what I did or what I saw, or what I thought. He was the means of sending me to school as soon as he learned that the school started. He was an Italian. Some of the signs I used were beard for man, breast for woman, moustache with spelling papa for papa, the hand moving over the face and one finger of each hand meeting parallel (alike, meaning that some one looked like me) for mother, the hand down over the shoulder moving like a bell for Sunday, two hands open before the eyes for book or paper, one hand stretching sideway for going, the hand moving backwards for coming, the hand moving slant for whipping, the fingers whirling for stealing, the rubbing of the thumb and one of the fingers for money, two hands turned opposite for breaking, one finger stretching from the eye for seeing, one finger stretching from the mouth for speaking, one finger stretching from the forehead for understanding, one finger rapping lightly on the forehead for knowing, ditto with negation for not knowing, one finger resting on the forehead with the eyes shut for thinking, one finger now resting on the forehead and then stretching with emphasis for understanding, etc., etc. The signs for meat, bread, milk, water, chocolate, horse, cow, were as natural as the Mexicans make nowadays. The Mexicans generally ask with facial gestures, 'What do you do?' 'How do you do?' 'What is the matter?' 'What is the news?' It is natural. I could then understand these questions.
