Shepherdstown register. [volume] (Shepherdstown, Va. [W. Va.]) 1849-1955, 1906-04-05
A BOY Talks With Animals.

Inc New Ork hefdlu PuoIohee
the following curious story =:
Perhaps the strangest case OF COM
munication and understanding be-
tween man and animals ever investl-
gated by scientists has come to light
IN eastern Alabama-in the section OF
cotton country between Wedowee and
Rockdale. The astounding reports
from the case have startled the stu.
dents of psychology, and the possibil-
ity of the establishment of complete
understanding between man and the
lower animals is suggested by the
facts of the case.
Howard Erwin, 6-year.old boy,
is reported by competent authority,
and the reports are substantiated
wholly or in part by the investiga-
tions recently conducted, to be able
to converse with, to understand and
to make himself understood perfectly
by animals of all kinds. By some
mysterious power-not yet under
stood and not understood at all by
himself-this boy, otherwise a per.
fectly healthy and normal lad, holds
long talks with COWS, with mules,
with dogs, horses, sheep, cats-even
with the barnyard fowls-and he un.
derstands and reports to his father or
the others just what the animals want,
all their grievances, their sickness
and their wants.
How be does it the boy does not
know. The power, it seems, was born
in him. While fond of animals, he
seems not to be more go than any
healthy child, nor do they seem es-
pecially attached to him, with the eI-
ception of Trace, his old coon dog
and the relation he appears to bear to
them lie simply that of a friendly
translator-or intermediary between
them and their master.
Nor has anyone yet been able to
discover whether it is by spoken Ian.
guage or by some mystic tranference
of thought that they understand each
other. 1t is known that when he is
near an animal they both make
sounds occasionally, but he speaks
nothing that anyone can understand,
nor does the alleged language sound
in any way connected or to have any
meaning whatever.
The discovery that the child is pos
sessed of a strange power has thrown
a veil of mysticism and superstition
around him. The negroes avoid him
and watch him with q strange mix
ture of fear and admiration.
When the child was just beginning
to toddle aronnd the touse it was no.
ticed he was not the same as other
children when he was in the presence
of human beings. He was extremely
intelligent from the time he first be-
gan to notice things, and he read the
minds of his mother and father and
bis sister Lizzie before he could talk.
The mother, who worked hard. had
little time to spend with him in play,
and his companions were his sitter, 3
years older than be, and Trace, the
coon dog. The mother noticed first
that she did not have to epeak to her
child when she wanted him to do
something. Often, she says, she
started to tell him it was time to take
a nap, and, before she could speak, be
either cried in protest against being
put to bed or toddled toward the
trundle bed and rolled into it.
She is not a particularly bright
woman nor yet one of much educa-
ton, although she can read and write.
but even she puzzles her brain about
the child. And, when he learned to
talk, she noticed it still more
One evening sbe and her husband