in jest that he proposed a residence in Italy where the influences that foster music might affect Mary at her most impressible period of life; and where, as he averred, the capacity to train this kind of aptitude exists in its highest degree.
Mary was a year and a-half old, with her father still unaware that for her music must ever be a frozen fountain. The children of the village school had come up to the hall to sing the Christmas hymn. They were well-trained in most of their schooling, but unusually so in music, in which Miss Smithers, their teacher, was a proficient. She has since, under another name, obtained celebrity in the music world.
Before they commenced the hymn, George made them a small oration. He had not so forgotten his town-councillor habits, but that an opportunity like this, to air his rhetoric, came like a true Christmas friend.
George’s oratory was decidedly of the fervid cast. He told the school-children that music was the great gift which we held in common with higher intelligences. In fact, deadness to music was a mark upon any one which meant “let not that man be trusted.” A taste for music was the sure concomitant of virtue, there could be no doubt of it; and an ear against which sweet sounds beat in vain, was a rock that rose from a wicked heart. Let them ever remember that.
The young musicians sang with a will to show themselves virtuous, and obtain the extra cake and halfpence which form virtue’s reward. As the impressive sounds of many well-drilled young voices swelled on our ears, I saw George with moist eyes (he was partly affected by the singing, and partly by his own eloquence), turning to little Mary, who sat playing at his feet with some toys Miss Smithers had just given her. He lifted the child up, and tried to divert her towards the singing; but after looking vacantly at the group, she struggled to be set down again to her playthings. A sudden restlessness affected her father, and he continued watching her during the remainder of the hymn. When the children had gone away, he again took up Mary on his knees, and without remarking to me that he meant anything beyond play, he made sudden noises close to and sometimes back from Mary’s ear, while her eyes were turned from him. She took not the slightest notice. But as soon as he turned her towards him and smiled, an answering smile at once responded. Having thus caught her eye, he opened his lips and imitated the movements made by a person speaking. The child mimicked the action. He then went through the same movements in an exaggerated fashion, but this time did really emit the sounds which such movements properly accompany. The child mimicked the exaggerated movements, but failed to give out voice. He then put the child down with infinite tenderness; and heaving a long sigh, which might mean either that be sought relief from the fatigue of sitting still, or that he threw off so some oppression upon his spirits, he rose up to walk about the room.
Later on in the evening I noticed that he was watching an opportunity of communicating his discovery. He was very anxious to know what nonsense he had been saying to the school-children, and regretted the bad habit he had acquired of speaking without thinking. He could very easily conceive of a pleasant family group sitting around a fire that burns warm and cheery in a locked-up house, whose broken bell-wires have ceased to tell that a stranger is at the gates. He could think also of a fleet of ships sailing in company and obeying one set of signals; but so too a vessel might voyage alone and not the less safely reach her haven.
I saw he was endeavouring to break the news to me. Then I perceived how silly it was to make believe that I did not know what he was trying to tell me gently. I therefore said broadly out that I knew Mary had only four senses; and though at first it was a frightful anguish to me, and could not but be always painful, yet when I said to myself that her part in life’s battle would be proportioned to her means of fighting it, I considered that the heavy sorrow was not without alleviation.
Our plans thenceforth were formed in concert. We determined at every cost to exhaust the possibility of cure, before we considered her deafness as anything but an accident which admitted of removal; for we steadily would not regard it as one of her conditions of existence. For some years our life was little else than waiting upon doctors, for the promise is to those who persevere. Promises indeed we had, for they fell like snowflakes everywhere, but melted with the same facility. Each new aurist gave us new hope, though each in succession regretted that we had not come to him sooner. In some cases we were cruelly victimised, and the health of our darling grievously impaired. In a few instances the truth was told us as plainly as perhaps they thought we could bear it, namely, that medical science could do nothing whatever for Mary. One flagrant case in London came before the police magistrate, and at least two others might have gone; but certain difficulties in establishing legal guilt in that kind of swindling stayed our hands. To mere exposure the men were callous, if indeed they did not flourish upon it, notoriety standing them in the same stead as celebrity.
At last even hope of cure died in us. What finally dissipated our delusion was the non-success of a painful and dangerous experiment she underwent in Paris. Her ears had been bored and blistered in the course of our wanderings, and all sorts of regimen prescribed and abided by without effecting improvement. In our desperation we agreed to try this Parisian remedy, which we were assured had proved successful in every case in which it had been undergone. I was not present at the operation, and dared not ask how she bore it; but it consisted in removing with a trepan a piece of the skull bone that sound might reach the brain through the opening.
To induce Mary to let her ears be examined, her father had bought for her a costly but exquisitely beautiful vase of Parian which she fancied in London. It represented an angel standing on a half-globe, and bearing, mouth upwards, a cornucopia with flowers. She was fond of nursing it as a doll, though careful in handling it to keep it