Excerpt from Life and Education of Laura Dewey Bridgman: The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Girl

The author and editor of the present volume was a teacher for five years in the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind. She was for three years the special instructor of Laura Bridgman, and had the honor of giving the first lesson to Oliver Caswell, another blind and deaf mute at the Asylum. She differed from Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the director of the Asylum, in regard to the time of commencing the religious educa tion of Laura; but she held him in high esteem as an enterprising, skilful, and persevering instuctor. He characterized her in words like the following She is a lady of great intelligence who is devotedly attached to [laura] an able and excellent teacher, who ful filled her duty with ability and conscientiousness; has been faithful and industrious and in the intellectual ih struction she has shown great tact and ability indeed to Miss Swift [now Mrs. Lamson] and Miss Wight [now Mrs. Bond] belong, far more than to any other persons the pure satisfaction of having been instrumental in the beautiful development of Laura's character.

One noteworthy advantage has been enjoyed by the editor of this volume. She has retained an intimate acquaintance with Laura Bridgman for thirty'seven years.

Annual Reports of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind, XI, p. 37 XIII, pp. 23, 24 XIV, p. 30, etc., etc. These documents will be hereafter alluded to simply as Annual Reports.

The blind deaf -mute was only in the thirteenth year of her age, and in the third year of her residence at the Asylum, when she was put under the particular and almost exclusive charge of Mrs. Lamson, and from that day to this has been accustomed to communicate her thoughts freely to the teacher who instructed her in 1840. The editor of the volume has thus been able to compare the later with the earlier development of Laura. Laura herself is liable to forget those earlier develop ments, to mistake her more recently acquired knowledge for that which she had acquired at a remoter period. The ideas, however, which she expressed in the initial stages of her education were recorded day by day, and the testimony of a written journal is far more trustworthy than that of the memory.

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