Miss Wilkins and I were invited to meet Miss Bridgman by Mrs. Lamson, who, under Dr. Howe, had been one of the first to teach Laura to communicate with others by means of the sign language. Mrs. Lamson told us of those early struggles, how overjoyed child and teachers were the day they succeeded in making her understand that certain signs made upon her open hand represented the door-key which they had put in her hand. When the import of this one thing, for which they had toiled long, dawned upon the shut-in soul, she was a freed being; she went about eagerly touching other objects, teasing in her mute way to be shown their “sign,” too. Slow, infinitely wearisome were those first steps in her education, but after a certain point, progress was astonishingly rapid. She had not the distraction other learners have; her thirst for knowledge was intense; her memory phenomenal--a thing once learned became a part of her; she wore out all her teachers with her insatiable desire to learn. Among other things Dr. Howe earnestly wished to test whether the human mind, without suggestions from outside, would, in its development, evolve the idea of a Supreme Being. Here was an unprecedented opportunity to test it, for, shut in as she was, Laura had no means of learning anything except through her teachers. It would be a valuable contribution to psychology to learn for a surety whether, unaided, her mind would conceive the idea of a Deity. So for years they planned and laboured with this experiment continually in view. Assistants were rigorously instructed to exclude any hints or teachings which would suggest worship or religion--anything which could in the remotest way give her a glimmering of such ideas. Laura was showing wonderful progress in development. Dr. Howe’s efforts seemed on the way to success in this important test, when one of his teachers was called away at a time when he himself was in Europe. The substitute, though carefully enjoined to observe the precautions so jealously practised, actuated by untimely zeal, and believing it to be her duty to thwart Dr. Howe in his experiment, deliberately enlightened Laura about the main orthodox teachings: she told her she had a soul to save from eternal damnation; that a just God stood ready to pardon her manifold sins, and so on. Laboriously she poured into Laura’s listening fingers the intricate orthodox instruction concerning which she had hitherto been kept in blissful ignorance.