BLIND GIRL'S WORK LESSON TO EDUCATION

Holmes, Fred L.

Blind Girl's Work Lesson to Education Child Can Read Conversation by Placing Her Hand on Person's Head; Never Studied to Acquire Gift; Rivals Helen Keller By FRED L. HOLMES DEAF and blind, but...

...The vocal cords are located in the larynx...
...She apparently had not studied the method...
...What are you looking for...
...Rivals Helen Keller By FRED L. HOLMES DEAF and blind, but able to discern the presence of any person in the room whom she knows, and how many are strangers, though they do not move...
...I am more happy now without my sight and hearing than I was before...
...Told that it would only be a short time before the light would flicker out she learned the point system taught to the blind for reading...
...The stag with a broken leg hobbles to the secluded thicket to lie down for weeks until nature has worked her cures...
...Ready for Ordeal NATURE seems to have prepared her for the awful ordeal...
...to a life of work than she now loves,—happy...
...By the vibration of the cords Wiletta is able to translate the words, through her finger ends...
...Maybe God alone knows...
...I want my white thread to sew," came the answer...
...awakened hidden powers of individuality...
...The menrbers of the present Senate who on July 13, 1912, voted to expel Lorimer number twenty, as follows: Ashurst, Borah, Cummins, Curtis, Hitchcock, Kenyon, La Follette, Lodge, Myers, Nelson, Overman, . Page, Poindexter, Pomerene, Reed, Simmons, Smith, of South Carolina, Swanson, Townsend, and Williams.—The Searchlight...
...And Wiletta was blind...
...One, in particular, wants to know how many Lorimer supporters still remain in the Senate...
...This flower is pink," she said as she brought a little pink rose to her nose...
...Physically she first seemed normal...
...He was then expelled from the Senate by a vote of 55 to 28...
...That alone would make me happy...
...Wiletta sat on a long leather divan in one of the sumptuous lobbies of the state capitol...
...Then another...
...I am so glad that I can talk to people...
...She enjoys the cut of doors as a song-bird that flits from shrub to tree...
...They offered her flowers...
...A kindly, buoyant, robust girl is Wiletta Hug-gins...
...A year passed and another misfortune...
...She hears you through her finger tips...
...At first she was able to hear only by placing her fingers on the throat of the person...
...Of the twenty-eight who voted for Lorimer on that roll call, only seven have survived and are members of the present Senate...
...That was the beginning of the phenomena...
...goes to meet a friend across the room as firmly and as surely as if she were normal...
...Maybe those who are doubly unfortunate have other powers never before awakened...
...Back to nature...
...How She Talks MORE marvelous still...
...Close by was her work basket and she reached for it...
...It was then that others became interested...
...Though she-eannot see you or hear your voice she divines your presence...
...She left the legislative halls, walking beside Superintendent Hooper...
...A pang and shiver went through her body...
...A visitor who had known Helen Keller came to inquire...
...I reached for a piece of material to sew...
...With defective sight and defective hearing, two imperfect avenues of approach to the brain, she was dull, stolid, discontented and made no progress whatever in intellectual development...
...At the age of ten she was sent to the school for the blind at Janesville, Wisconsin, from her home at Chippewa Falls...
...She carries on a conversation with two people at the same time...
...The colors of samples of cloth were told in the same way...
...Out of the night of darkness, bewilderment and despair there flashed a new light into the troubled soul of Wiletta Huggins...
...Maybe it is a gift of God to reward me for the loss of my, sight and hearing," is" the girl's only explanatipn...
...Balancing In Nature THERE seems to be a strange balancing in nature...
...Turning to answer the one and at the same time understanding the interrupted talk of the other, she may break into the conversation before her answer to the first is concluded...
...Each loss has some compensating change...
...to her little story books...
...Her eyes began to fail...
...The freedom, hope, comfort and joy which this discovery meant to her dark world has no parallel aside from that of Helen Keller...
...Says Girl is Wonder WILETTA HUGGINS is a wonder," said Superintendent Hooper...
...The question arises in my mind if we are not attacking the educational problem from the wrong angle...
...These are: Brandegee, Dillingham", Fletcher, Jones of Washington, McCumber, Penrose, and Smoot...
...Perhaps the great accomplishments are due to the fact that she was once normal, and could hear and sea that she has quicked a restoration of her faculties through other agencies of the human body...
...Back to the long lanes and shads trees and beds of flowers that she delights to tend in the institution yard...
...She can point the- location in the room of every person she docs not know—and every friend that may be hidden to decoy her...
...asked one of the visitors through the finger tip method...
...She played with the other children with an alertness that failed to betray the loss of her sight seeing powers...
...If she continues to develop as she has in the past two years she may be able to teach the scientific world the use of a lost sense of discerning the presence of unseen persons...
...Should not every child be made perfect in so far as possible by the physician, the nurse and social worker before being sent to the educator...
...It just came to her all at once...
...But this alone does not explain her strange powers of perception now that she is deaf and blind...
...She tried to interest Wiletta in finger reading—a placing of the fingers on the larynx, lips and nose,—a method used by Helen Keller to understand human conversation...
...She seemed groping in nature's wonderland for some other power...
...Only she is blind...
...I cannot tell you," she replied holding a little spool of blue cotton in her hands about to use for embroidery work...
...A flash...
...And this one is yellow," as she scented a daffodil...
...But Wiletta appeared disinterested...
...She remained a paradox...
...It just simply came to me...
...One day last fall Wiletta put her fingers to a teacher's throat and repeated what she had said," declared J. T. Hooper, superintendent of the institute...
...When these two imperfect avenues of approach were cut off and she was forced to use the most perfect avenue of all,— the sense of touch,—she immediately became interested, happy, intelligent and made very rapid progress both with her head and hands...
...Larimer and Newberry THE pending Newberry scandal brings to mind the Lorimer case...
...Whether like some wild animal she has an acute sense of smell that tells her these things, she does not know...
...Once Wiletta Huggins saw and heard...
...To psychologists and educators from the learned faculty of the University of Wisconsin who came to see her, Wiletta Huggins still remained a strange paradox,—"a wonder child...
...Not herself, but what she may teach to the educational world may be more wonderful than education alone...
...I cannot understand it," she told one of the legislators who questioned her...
...the deaf learn to read lips and facial expressions...
...Wiletta Huggins of Janesville may be a greater wander than Helen Keller...
...Hew she can do it seems ordained not known...
...This is the new occult sense which a little sixteen year old girl in a state institute for the blind in southern Wisconsin is demonstrating to the world...
...Apparently she is able to interpiet the words in advance of hearing pupils, for the vibration of the cords seem to come a fraction of a second in advance of the audible words...
...I was sitting in the sewing room learning to make an apron," explained Wiletta in answer to a question...
...Wiletta Huggins had one advantage over Miss Keller...
...I do not know myself...
...The little stories in her hooks caught her fancy...
...Then came misfortune...
...Back to the state institute for the blind she has gone to continue her training...
...Misfortune has enlivened her...
...Several subscribers have written approvingly of our interpretation of the facts, agreeing "that the Newberry case is far worse than the Lorimer scandal...
...But she was slow, disinterested, and plodding in her school work...
...She was telling colors by the sense of smell...
...The Lorimer case was decided July 13, 1912...
...Animals are cured without ministrations of man...
...The loss of sight is partly rewarded by a divine isensa of touch...
...Early in October 1919 while apparently in good health Wiletta was playing with some of Iter classmates...
...She passed through the shadow from twilight to darkness without remorse...
...Scores were gathered about her...
...I could see somewhat...
...She does not press the larynx hard, merely placing her finger tips gently on the skin...
...When the girl was brought before the Wisconsin legislature to evidence her strange powers a few weeks ago educators and legislators, physicians' and psychologists vied with each other to name the secret...
...First she took up one spool of thread...
...Darkness...
...The indolent, meticulous child became at once aggressive and daring in her determination to acquire knowledge...
...It was October 1920, and out of doors the leaves were whirling and falling to the ground...
...But it is the uncanny sense of detecting the presence of her friends, the telling of colors of flowers or bits of cloth that seem to be the most marvelous of her achievements...
...Even the work with her hands was much inferior to what it is now...
...Her diffidence adumbrated no mystery even to others...
...All fajled...
...But hew do you know these things...
...here it is,"as she brought the white spool to her lips...
...Through the tips of her fingers she read the lessons for the blind, with a new interest...
...Once she could see and hear...
...After pressing them to her lips laid them down...
...It rendered her deaf...
...I cried to the teacher...
...In faculties she appeared below normal...
...Romping over the play grounds she seems no different than any other strong girl of sixteen...
...Two people may ask questions at the same time and get quick answers without a mistake or a repetition of one of the questions...
...Now she has discovered, that as physicians have long suspected, the entire bony facial structure and head of a person acts as a human sounding board, and she is able to hear as well by placing her hands on top of the person's head or on the forehead as she is by pressing her fingers on the throat...

Vol. 13 • September 1921 • No. 9


 
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