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To return to Laura Bridgman, whose namesake by the way I am:

Another important friendship of her childhood was that which she formed with Oliver Caswell, a blind deaf-mute boy whom my father discovered and brought to the Institution in 1841. He was then eight years old, a comely and healthy child, blind and deaf from early infancy, and had received no special instruction. My father proceeded at once to teach him, following in the main the same methods he had employed in Laura's case, but with one important modification already noticed.

"Profiting," he says, "by the experience I had gained in other cases, I omitted several steps of the process before employed, and commenced at once with the finger language. Taking, therefore, several articles having short names, such as key, cup, mug, etc., and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down, and taking his hand placed it upon one of them, and then with my own made the letters k-e-y. He soon learned to make the letters for key, pen, pin."

In the forty-third Report, my father says:

"After long, oft-repeated, and patient efforts, he got hold of the thread by which he was led out of his dark and isolated labyrinth into light. . . .

"Laura herself took great interest and pleasure in assisting those who undertook the tedious task of instructing him. She loved to take his brawny hand with her slender fingers, and show him how to shape the mysterious signs which were to become to him keys of knowledge and methods of expressing his wants, his feelings, and his thoughts. . . . Patiently, trustingly, without knowing why or wherefore, he willingly submitted to the strange process. Curiosity, sometimes amounting to wonder, was depicted on his countenance, over which smiles would spread ever and anon; and he would laugh heartily as he comprehended some new fact, or got hold of a new idea.

"No scene in a long life has left more vivid and pleasant impressions upon my mind than did that of these two young children of nature, helping each other to work their way through the thick wall which cut them off from intelligible and sympathetic relations with all their fellow-creatures. They must have felt as if immured in a dark and silent cell, through chinks in the wall of which they got a few vague and incomprehensible signs of the existence of persons like themselves in form and nature. Would that the picture could be drawn vividly enough to impress the minds of others as strongly and pleasantly as it did my own! I seem now to see the two, sitting side by side at a school desk, with a piece of pasteboard, embossed with tangible signs representing letters, before them and under their hands. I see Laura, grasping one of Oliver's stout hands with her long graceful ringers, and guiding his forefinger along the outline; while, with her other hand, she feels the changes in the features of his face, to find whether, by any motion of the lips or expanding smile, he shows any sign of understanding the lesson: while her own handsome and expressive face is turned eagerly toward his; every feature of her countenance absolutely radiant with intense emotions, among which curiosity and hope shine most brightly. Oliver, with his head thrown a little back, shows curiosity amounting to wonder; and his parted lips and relaxing facial muscles express keen pleasure, until they beam with that fun and drollery which always characterize him. . . .

"Three years wrought a strange change and wonderful improvement. They would stand face to face, as if expecting some burst of light to dispel the utter darkness, and enable them to see each other's countenance. They seemed listening attentively for some strange sound to break and dispel the perpetual and deathlike silence in which they had ever lived, and permit them to hear each other's voice. The expression of Laura's face was much more vivid than that of Oliver's; indeed, it was sometimes painful rather than pleasant, owing to the anxiety expressed by her singularly marked and symmetrical features, which was sometimes so intense as to beget the thought that she might be a wild young witch, or be going mad.

"Oliver, on the other hand, was ever placid, smiling, and frequently overflowing with jollity and fun.

"How changed the scene of their intercourse after four or five years' use of tangible speech had given them a greater range of language, and enabled them to interchange thought and emotions easily and rapidly! Laura, quick as lightning in her perceptions of meaning and in her apt replies, would still almost quiver in her eagerness for greater speed in the flow of her companion's signs. Oliver, patient, passive, reflective, and even smiling, was closely attentive. As the interest increased, Laura would gesticulate with arms and hands, as well as fingers, and dance up and down on the floor excitedly; while Oliver's face, as he grew a little moved, would become flushed, and the perpetual smile on his lips would spread into a broad laugh, which made his pallid face the very image of fun and frolic. No scene on the boards of a pantomimic theatre could exceed this real, living, but silent intercourse between two sorely bereaved but happy youth, who never thought of the impression which they made upon beholders.