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"I must be supposed to mention this only as her faithful chronicler, and to do it also in sorrow. If the poor child spoke inadvertently on such topics, it was without consciousness of it, and she was made to do so by indiscreet persons, not by any communications of mine or of her teacher; we shall never speak to her of Jesus Christ but in such a way as to impart a portion at least of our own reverence, gratitude and love. . . .

"There is this constant difficulty with her (and is it not one too much overlooked in the religious instruction of other children?) that being unable to form any idea of virtue and goodness in the abstract, she must seek it in the concrete; and her teachers and friends, frail and imperfect beings like herself, furnish the poor impersonations of the peerless attributes of God.

"This difficulty might have been avoided, I think, by the plan which I had marked out for her intellectual faculties and moral sentiments, and which was simply to follow the natural order; but since that plan has been marred by the well-meant officiousness of others, there remains only to remedy, as far as we can, what we cannot cure entirely -- the bad effects of ill-timed direction of her thoughts to subjects too far above her comprehension."

I must refrain from quoting other passages in which my father sets forth more at length his principle of following nature as his guide, in the education of the deaf-blind. Briefly, he was the pioneer in this field; he invented a new science. No blind deaf-mute had ever before been taught the use of language; indeed, it was considered an impossibility to impart such knowledge to a human being in this condition. Blackstone declares that a person deprived of so many senses would be an idiot in the eye of the law, because his mind could not be reached. This dictum had been reaffirmed by a body of learned men a short time before my father undertook the task of Laura's education. With the true scientific spirit that distinguished him, he carefully reasoned out every step of the way, and made a full and clear record of the methods which he invented, not for his pupils alone, but for the whole afflicted class for which he opened the way to human fellowship. As will be seen in a later chapter, while on his wedding tour in Europe he had this matter constantly in mind; sought out a number of blind deaf-mutes, took the first steps to reach their minds, explained his methods to benevolent persons in the neighbourhood, and urged them to continue the work.

It should be noted that in cases subsequent to Laura's he omitted the earlier steps of the process, beginning at once with the finger alphabet instead of the printed words.

Thus he cleared the path which has since led many persons into the open way. His methods have been employed in all subsequent cases, and after seventy years of trial remain the standard.

The affection between Laura and my father was, as Dickens says, "as far removed from all ordinary care and regard as the circumstances in which it had its growth are apart from the common occurrences of life."

To my father, Laura was the child of his spirit, only less beloved than his own children; next to them she received the fullest measure of that almost passionate tenderness which was so integral a part of his nature.

To Laura, I may with reverence say that "Doctor "came next to God in her deeply religious mind.

This being so, his marriage naturally was something of a shock to her. She had felt herself first in her benefactor's thoughts; she realized that now she must take the second place.

"Does Doctor love me like Julia? "she asked her teacher anxiously.

"No! "said Miss Swift.

"Does he love God like Julia? "

"Yes!"

She repeated the question later, adding, "God was kind to give him his wife."

Nevertheless, she became much attached to my mother, and later formed a tender and intimate friendship with my sister Julia.

This seems a fitting place in which to speak briefly of this my father's oldest and darling child.

In a later chapter it will be seen that he speaks of the youngest, my brother Samuel, as his best loved child. Indeed, I fancy that whatever one had been taken from him would have seemed the dearest for the time, for the depth and tenderness of his love for us all may not be expressed in words. But the two eldest children, Julia and Florence, were naturally more companions to him than the younger ones, and to them especially he was not only father, counsellor, and teacher, but brother, friend and playmate.

As Julia grew older she took an ardent interest in his work among the blind, and in her early as in her later womanhood she became their friend and helper in her degree, as he in his. She taught them, read to them, wrote to them, worked and played with them. Her blind friends could not see her almost seraphic beauty, but I fancy that to many of them her voice was like no other voice.

As the wife of Michael Anagnos she was able to continue her beneficent activities at the Institution, till her death in 1886. Childless herself, she, like my father, found a child of the spirit in every young creature deprived of the blessing of sight, and her last words on earth were, "Take care of the little blind children! "