244 LAURA BRIDGMAN. she exhibited at twenty months signs of uncommon intel- ligence. She was two years of age when she was attacked by a disease which brought her to death's door, one of those complaints the after consequences of which are often more terrible and lasting than the disease itself. For seven weeks the fever raged. Her eyes and ears became living sores, and they were finally consumed. For five months slie lay in a darkened room, and two whole years passed before she was sufficiently restored to take her natural place in the family. But how changed her condition ! She was totally blind. She was totally deaf. She had lost the power of speech. She could not smell. There remained no avenue from the outer world to the mind within, except the sense of touch. Such was her state at the* age of four years — a healthy, sensitive, eager, intelligent child, able only to use her feet as means of locomotion, and her fingers to acquire knowledge. As soon as she was well enough to get about, she began curiously to grope around her room, and then to explore the house, feeling, lifting, touching in various ways every object, animate and inanimate, within her reach. She used to go with her mother about the house, and feel her hands as she performed the usual household work, and seemed to take pleasure in imitating her motions, although it was impossible she should know their object. Her imitative power was remarkable, and in the course of the next three years she even learned to knit and to sew a little. Being human, she began also to show the less amiable traits of human nature, to her parents' great perplexity and distress. As they had no way of reasoning with her, there was no method except that of force to prevent her from running into danger, or doing what was manifestly improper. So passed the first three years after her affliction.
