XVIII. LAURA BRIDGMAK IF the reader has ever known a family one child of which was either blind, deaf and dumb, or so lame as to be helpless, he has probably been struck with the great variety of compensating circumstances which gathered round that child to make its lot not less happy than that of children in general. It has seemed to me sometimes as if everybody and everything connected with such a child enters into a sort of holy conspiracy to alle- viate its condition. Its mother loves it with a singular depth of tenderness. Its father regards it with pitying fondness. The relations and friends of the family vie with one another which shall do most for it. Its own brothers and sisters — cruel as children often are to one another — often look upon the afflicted one with a mixture of awe and affection, which makes them vigilant in good offices toward it. In the town of Hanover, in New Hampshire, the seat of Dartmouth College, a town surrounded with moun- tains, and traversed by rapid mountain streams, Laura Dewey Bridgman was born, in the year 1829. She was a bright, pretty child, with pleasing blue eyes, but of so feeble a constitution, that during the first eighteen months of her existence her parents scarcely expected her to out- live her infancy. But after her eighteenth month, she rapidly improved in health, and, in a very short time, she was as well and vigorous as children of her age usually are. Her parents, as parents are apt to do, thought that (243)
