Connecticut western news., 1896-04-23
TEACHING BLIND DEAF MuTes
snrprfsing Progress Made With . Number
 f,f R1ra

enrprfsing Progress Made With Number
 of Pupils.
 Three blind deaf mutes, whose facul- ties have been developed from com- pletely latent condition, are subjects of special notice in the report of the Per kins Institution For the Blind, Boston. Edith Thomas is described as furnishing convincing testimony to the efficacy of the system which is pursued in training such children. She has a good share of common sense, but is little averse to intellectual exertion. Yet she is improv- ing fast, gaining knowledge regularly and systematically and is steadily be- roming more skillful, attentive, thought ful, logical and earnest, and the stream of her thoughts grows broader, deeper and richer" She is fond of letter writ ing and does it with increasing facility of expression, while her letters show that she appreciates the pleasures of life and despite her privations enjoys them highly. She likes reading and be- ing read to, but wants her books true to life and will not listen to fairy or high ly imaginative stories. She is able to appreciate the rhythm of poetry, and Whittier and Tennyson are among her favorites. She dislikes arithmetic and is backward in it, but is proficient in geog- raphy. She has learned to mold maps in clay and is able to repeat accurately the details of the surface of the regions she has studied. At the school commence ment of 1894 she modelled the map of Massachusetts,, divided it into counties in the presence of the audience and pointed out the natural features and the towns with her left hand, while with her right hand she spelled the names in- to the hand of blind classmate, who announced them. She has become skillful dolls dressmaker without the aid of patterns, and in teaching the use of the Braille typewriter to her compan- ions she has exhibited the qualities of . strict disciplinarian.
 Willie Elizabeth Robin, now 10 years old, came to the institution four years ago, totally blind and deaf and ignorant of language. She has become proficient in reading, writing, elementary zoology, articulation and knitting and sewing by the Sloyd method She has even learned to use her tongue rather than talk with her fingers. She is specially interested in studying animal forms and searches out the minute details of their structure. She is expected to tell all she can discover of each specimen given her, to represent it in clay and afterward write down what she has learned. Of crayfsh studied thus she reported: Ut has eight arms and two legs and tail and two eyes; it has body; it lives in the water. The body is hard, and the arms and the legs are not strong; they are soft. "
 Tommy Stringer came to the kinder garten department feeble, inert, exhib- iting few signs of intelligence and seem- ingly devoid of most of the impulses of children. He is now full of eager curi- enjoys life and is bright, affectionate and extremely fond of fun. He is at the head of his class in some of his studies. He is remarkably interested in matters of housekeeping and domestic economy. He has strong bent toward geological study. In a talk about fish his attention was drawn to the backbone. He felt it carefully from end to end and then passed his fingers up and down his own backbone to show the correspondence. "On discovering the eyes, mouth, nos trils, etc., of the frog, he pointed to similar features of his own, and when he found joints in the frogs hind legs he immediately began looking for the joints of his own body and found near ly all" No seeing boys portrait is more animated in expression than his. Popular Science Monthly.