File:Blind Deaf (1904) (14583023237).jpg

Identifier: blinddeaf00will (find matches)
Title: Blind Deaf
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: William Wade
Subjects: Deafblindness
Publisher: Hecker Brothers
Contributing Library: American Printing House for the Blind, Inc., M. C. Migel Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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ached the Perkins Institution for the Blind, inSouth Boston, Mass. Through the characteristiclarge-heartedness on the part of its trustees and ofthe philanthropic public, the doors of its kindergar-ten at Jamaica Plain were swung wide open to receivethis little waif of humanity, for whom no other gar-den blossomed in the whole wide beautiful world. He was brought there on the eighth of April,1891, a mere lump of breathing clay, showing nosigns of intelligence beyond an instinctive recogni-tion of the needs of existence. He crept instead ofwalking, and was in all other respects like a baby.It was obvious that the earliest training must bedirected toward making him more independent. Areversal of his waking and sleeping time was thefirst necessity, for since he had been the charge ofa nurse doing night-duty at the hospital his dayhad been turned into night. This was soon accom-plished and Tommys hours became those of thekindergarten world. He was taught to walk, to dress and feed him- 94
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THOMAS STRINGER. self, — in a word, to exchange infanthood for child- Thehood. He proved to be a good-natured, affectionate Blind-Deaflittle fellow, whose tiny arms would reach out for amute embrace whenever he detected a kindly touch,but he made no discrimination between friends andstrangers. Although signs of latent intelligence were notlacking, his extreme apathy added another barrier tothose which his twofold infirmity had set about himand which were of themselves sufficiently impene-trable. Day after clay he passively allowed his fin-gers to be placed so as to form the word bread, whenthis was given to him to eat, but with no respon-sive act on his part, until at last, on one glad dayin November, Tommy brightened up and volunta-rily spelled b-r as he took a mouthful of bread. Thevictory was won ! Tommys education was begun ! It is indeed a far cry, as one friend has aptlyexpressed it, from the Tommy Stringer of thoseearly days to the one who stands before us at theclose of the

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