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Ninth Annual Report Of The Trustees Of The Perkins Institution And Massachusetts Asylum For The Blind
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81 | The words here given -and indeed in all cases- are precisely as she used them; for great care is taken to note them at the time of utterance. It will be observed that she uses the pronoun, personal and possessive; and so ready is she to conceive the propriety of it, and the impropriety of her former method, that upon my recently saying, 'Doctor will teach Laura,' she eagerly shook my arm to correct me, and told me to say, "I will teach you." She is delighted when she can catch any one in an error like this; and she shows her sense of the ludicrous, by laughter, and gratifies her innocent self-esteem by displaying her knowledge. | |
82 | It will be observed that these words are all spelled correctly; and indeed her accuracy in this respect is remarkable. She requires to have a word spelled to her only once, or twice at most, and she will seldom fail to spell it right ever afterwards. | |
83 | I will give some sentences such as she was accustomed to use about the commencement of the past year, and contrast them with those of later date. Riding in the stage coach with her teacher over a rough road, she said, "Laura will say to man horse will run softly -- horse is wrong." Sitting at breakfast she asked "who did make egg?"-- Ans. "hen" "With foot?" Ans.-- "No;" "Laura do love egg, hen will make more." | |
84 | Here are some of her sentences of a more recent date, and subsequently to her learning the use of pronouns, the numbers of nouns, &c. Being surprised lately, that I had not examined her for some time, she stopped short in her lesson, and said to her teacher, "Doctor is not glad that I can cypher good;" being asked why, she said, "because he does not want me to show him sum," she was told I was busy, and had gone to the City, she said, "horse will be much tired to go to Boston all days." | |
85 | She easily learned the difference between the singular and plural form, but was inclined for some time to apply the rule of adding s, universally. For instance, at her first lesson she had the words arm-arms, hand-hands, &c.; then being asked to form the plural of box, she said box s, &c., and for a long time she would form the plural by the general rule, as lady, ladys, &C. | |
86 | One of the girls had the mumps; Laura learned the name of the disease; and soon after she had it herself, but she had the swelling only on one side; and some one saying, you have got the mumps, she replied quickly, "no no, I have mump." | |
87 | She was a long time in learning words expressive of comparison; indeed her teacher quite despaired of making her under stand the difference between good, better, and best, after having spent many days in the attempt. By perseverance however, and by giving her an idea of comparative sizes, she was at last enabled to use comparisons pretty well. She seemed to attach to the word large, when connected with an object, a substantive meaning, and to consider it a specific name of the particular thing. The same difficulty perhaps occurs with common children, only we do not notice it: children merely observe at first; comparison comes later; and perhaps few girls of six years can be made to have a clear idea of the power and signification of the word or, which, insignificant as it seems, has been a stumbling block to Laura up to this day. | |
88 | With pronouns she had very little difficulty. It was thought best at first to talk with her as one does with an infant; and she learned to reply in the same way. Laura want water, give Laura water; but she readily learned to substitute the pronoun, and now says give me water -- I want water, &c. Indeed she will not allow persons to address her in the third person, but instantly corrects them, being proud to show her knowledge. | |
89 | She learned the difference between present and past tense the last year, but made use of the auxiliaries; during this year she has learned the method of inflecting the verb. In this process too her perfect simplicity rebukes the clumsy irregularities of our language: she learned, jump jumped -- walk walked, &c., until she had an idea of the mode of forming the imperfect tense, but when she came to the word see, she insisted that it should be seed in the imperfect; and after this, upon going down to dinner, she asked if it was eat -- eated, but being told it was ate, she seemed to try to express the idea that this transposition of letters was not only wrong, but ludicrous, for she laughed heartily. | |
90 | The eagerness with which she followed up these exercises was very delightful; and the pupil teasing the teacher for more words, is in pleasing contrast with the old method, where all the work was on one side, and where the coaxing, and scolding, and birchen appliances to boot, often failed to force an idea into the mind in the proper shape. But Laura is always ready for a lesson; and generally has prepared, beforehand, a number of questions to put to her teacher; for instance, when she was learning past tenses, she came one morning with fourteen verbs, of which she knew the present form, to ask for the imperfect. |