Laura Bridgman

“ She even added, “Tell them I do not think that women can be as skilful as men.” But she soon asked us to prescribe for her eyes, explaining that the lids were sometimes sore. It struck us as novel to be asked to prescribe for Laura Bridgman’s eyes. Her friend told her we were only students, and had not yet learned to prescribe, but added, “I can tell you something that will relieve them—if you will get some of the iron-water from a blacksmith and bathe them, it will help the soreness.”
“What is a blacksmith?” asked Laura—“Is it one who colours things black?” ”

“ Her sister in calamity, Laura Bridgman, of the Institution for the Blind in Boston, has far surpassed her in intellectual attainments, and excites the wondering admiration of every beholder. The felicity of her position, the untiring philanthropy of her patron, Dr. Howe, and the constant devotion of an accomplished teacher, have probably produced this difference of result, more than any original disparity of talents or capacity.
Julia, in her life of patient regularity, affords as strong a lesson as can be given of the power of industry to soothe privation and to confer content. ”

“ Once, while on a visit to Boston, Julia heard the wonderful story of Laura Bridgman, who had just been led out of darkness into the light of life and joy by a certain Dr. Howe, a man of whom people spoke as a modern paladin of romance, a Roland or Bayard. She saw him, and felt at once that he was the most remarkable man she had ever known. He, on his part, saw a youthful prophetess, radiant and inspired, crowned with golden hair. Acquaintance ripened into friendship, friendship into love; and{128} so it happened that, in the year 1843, Samuel G. Howe and Julia Ward were married. ”

“ A manual alphabet was used, and Laura learned to read and write in sixteen months, having acquired a considerable vocabulary. Her intellect developed rapidly, and she learned mathematical operations to a limited extent. Her case attracted a great deal of attention, and the system of instruction developed by Dr. Howe in her case was applied successfully to other children similarly deprived of their senses. Laura had no conception of religion up to her twelfth year, as her instructors purposely refrained from giving her any ideas of God until she was old enough to take a correct idea. ”

“ They shout aloud as he flies past them, the long stride of the chestnut skimming over the ground, and spattering fragments of torn grass and ploughed-up earth about him as he goes. Laura sees the scarlet jacket rise for a moment against the low grey sky, and then fly onward, and that is about all she sees of the dreaded leap which she had looked at in fear and trembling the day before. Her heart is still beating with a strange vague terror, when her lover rides quietly past the stand, and the people about her cry out that the race has been nobly won. ”

“ The instincts of possession and domination were strong in him, and but for the accident that wrenched his mind awry he would probably have made himself a king to Laura, for, once her master, he would have grown more gentle and more tender as the years went by, while Laura was one of those women who find happiness in love and duty: not a weak woman, not a coward, but a humble-minded woman with no great opinion of her own judgment, who would have liked to look up to father, brother, sister, husband, as better and wiser than herself. ”

“ Overhead shone the midday sun in a sky of cloudless blue, but nature spread her canvas all in vain for Laura. Another time she would have paused to drink in the beauty of the scene, to follow with admiring eyes the movements of the boat which, brave in a new coat of paint, swept along in a wake of billowing foam, but to-day she stood unheeding. All that she saw was the pathetic figure of a little girl with crutches receding in the distance. ”

“ Lips that had never breathed a word of love, now murmured sweetest words in his ear; eyes that had never looked into a lover’s eyes, gazed and lost themselves in the depths of his. Never was lover more innocently or unreservedly adored. If he had been boastful or self-assertive, Laura’s pride would have taken alarm. But his deep humility, and a shadow of melancholy which hung over him even when he seemed happiest, asked for her pity; and a woman is never better pleased with her lover than when he has need of her compassion. ”

“ Time cures most wounds. Give me time, Laura, and do not judge me too hardly. I possess the poet’s curse, a mind more sensitive than the minds of ordinary men—dowered with the love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn.’
‘I hope you will leave your dowry outside when you come across this threshold,’ said Laura, with a smile that was more contemptuous than relenting. ‘I can accept friendship from no one who does not like my husband.’
‘Then I will struggle with the original man within me, and try to like John Treverton. ”

“ Had her mother lived, doubtless she would have succeeded in developing the precious germs that pride had stifled. Left too early to herself, Laura had neglected, as useless plants, all her good qualities, and had cultivated only her defects. It were unjust not to add that she had more accomplishments than most young girls of her age. Constantly depreciated by her companions, she had neglected nothing that might raise her above them. She was a good musician, and painted landscapes with as much skill as can he expected from an artist who has never studied nature. ”

“ I am the weakest of mankind. But it cannot make very much difference. She knows I am engaged—and—Lady Laura is right. The sooner the marriage comes off, the better. I shall never be safe till the knot is tied; and then duty, honour, feeling, and a dozen other motives, will hold me to the right course."
He strolled back to his party only a little time before the horses were put in, and on this occasion went straight to the phaeton, and devoted himself to Lady Laura.
"You are going to drive me home, of course?" ”

“ A woman of middle height, with a fine figure, a wealth of fair hair, and an aquiline nose of the true patrician type, her admirers said. The mouth was rather large, but redeemed by a set of flashing teeth and a winning smile; the chin inclined to be of that order called "double;" and indeed a tendency to increasing stoutness was one of the few cares which shadowed Lady Laura's path. She was five-and-thirty, and had only just begun to tell herself that she was no longer a girl. She got on admirably with Clarissa, as she informed her husband afterwards when she described the visit. ”

“ In a solitary village, remote from her equals in age and rank, Laura necessarily lived much alone, and in solitude she acquired a grave and contemplative turn of mind. Far from the scenes of dissipation and frivolity, conversant with the grand and the sublime in nature, her sentiments assumed a corresponding elevation. She had heard that there was vice in the world: she knew that there was virtue in it; and, little acquainted with other minds, deeply studious of her own, she concluded that all mankind were, like herself, engaged in a constant endeavour after excellence ”

“ The painful thought was far from new to her, that the passion of Hargrave was a tribute to her personal charms alone. With such a passion, even were its continuance possible, Laura felt that she could not be satisfied. To be the object of it degraded her in her own eyes. 'No, no,' she exclaimed, covering her face with her hands, 'let me not even legally occupy only the place which the vilest might fill. If I cannot be the friend, the companion, as well as the mistress, better, far better, were it that we should part for ever.'
No labour is sufficient to acquaint us fully with our own hearts. ”

“ Occupying, as he now does, the enviable position of being a medallist of the Paris Salon several times over, not to mention medals from Münich, London and Berlin and the decoration of the Cross of the Legion of Honor and similar honors, Mr. Bridgman owes his eminence as much to his indefatigable work and his determination as to his talent.
There have been artists distinguished from the fact that their genius was bizarre or their point of view extraordinary, and others preëminent because they solved, with the ease of genius, the general problems of their art. ”

“ Laura is only two years older than I, but how well she had understood and how sympathetic she was! It was the motherhood within her, I suppose, that drove her to the marriage and the kiddies.
The scent of those summers comes to my nostrils now, the fragrance of lilac and honeysuckle, that brought ideas to one's head, dreams of achievement, of perfection and happiness. Who has that cottage now, I wonder? Poor Laura's dreams have been distorted into a very dismal sort of reality. And what of my own? But here is Griselda and she is announcing Dibdin. ”

“ Laura was no dreamer, she had never doubted that her husband would rather have the use of his legs again than all the feminine devotion in the world, but she had hoped to soothe him, perhaps for a little while to make him forget: it had not crossed her mind that her anguish of love and service would be rejected. Enlightenment was like folding a sword to her breast. ”

“ For Laura's virtue was not of that saint-errant kind that sallies forth in quest of opportunities to signalize itself, and inflames its pride by meditation on the wonders it would achieve, if placed in perilous situations. Distrustful of herself—watchful to avoid occasions of falling—she had no ambition for the dangerous glory of reforming a rake into a good husband. ”

“ For a moment Laura looked a little undecided, but Billie jumped up, ran over to Vi and hugged her.
“You’re a perfect angel!” she cried. “That’s just exactly what I was thinking myself. Only I wasn’t going to ask you girls. I was just going to leave mine and say nothing about it.”
“Oh, well,” grumbled Laura, taking her own bright coin from its hiding place and handing it over reluctantly. “If you girls are going to be foolish I suppose I’ve got to be too. Only it’s no joke,” she added, in a plaintive tone that made the girls giggle, “when you think of all the sodas and candy it would buy!” ”

“ He was provoked by the suspicion that he had shown less as a coming dramatist than as a present fool, and he contrasted his own awkwardness with Adams' whimsical ease of manner. Did a woman ever forget how a man appeared when she first met him? Would any amount of fame to-morrow obliterate from Laura's memory his embarrassment of yesterday? He had heard that the surface impression was what counted in the feminine mind, and this made him think enviously, for a minute, of Perry Bridewell—of his handsome florid face and his pleasant animal magnetism. ”

“ The woman's tidings excited great alarm; Mr. Bridgman himself instantly hurried off, and hired messengers were, one after another, dispatched by the mother in quest of the missing child. As hour after hour flew by without result, extrava [Pg 690] gant rewards, which set hundreds of persons in motion, were offered by the distracted parents; but all to no purpose. Day dawned, and as yet not a gleam of intelligence had been obtained of the lost one. At length some one suggested that inquiry should be made after Richard Green. ”

“ Waking in the night, with a start, Laura asked herself why she had burned the letter. As she lay there in the darkness it seemed to her that the sudden light shone in her thoughts again, and she saw everything made clear to her as she had seen it while she held Jennie Alta's hand. In that instant she had looked beyond the small personal emotions to the woman's soul with its burden of greed and sensuality, and because she had been able to do this, she had felt herself to be composed and released from hatred. ”

“ She imagined, that lonely and desolate she should pass through life, and joyfully hail the messenger that called her away; like some wretch, who, cast alone on a desert rock, watches for the sail that is to waft him to his native land.
The despair of strong minds is not listless or inactive. The more Laura was convinced that life was lost as to all its pleasing purposes, the more was she determined that it should be subservient to useful ends. Earthly felicity, she was convinced, had fled for ever from her grasp; and the only resolution she could form, was never more to pursue it ”

“ A meridian sun beat on her uncovered head ere Laura began to revive. Recollection stole upon her like the remembrance of a feverish dream. As one who, waking from a fearful vision, still trembles in his joy, she scarcely dared to hope that the dread hour was past, till raising her eyes she saw the dark woods bend over her, and steal slowly away as the canoe glided on with the tide. The raptures of fallen man own their alliance with pain, by seeking the same expression. Joy and gratitude too big for utterance long poured themselves forth in tears. ”

“ Wilberforce and Gerty Bridewell were awaiting her, but it seemed to her that her attitude toward them had grown less intimate—that she herself, her friends, and even the ordinary surroundings of her life were different from what they had been only several hours before. She wanted to be alone—to retreat into herself in search of a clearer knowledge, and even her voice sounded strangely altered in her own ears.
"You look as if you had been frightened, Laura; what is it?" asked Gerty, pressing her hand.
"It is nothing," returned Laura, with a glance; "it is only that my head aches." ”