There was one silent figure, however, who spoke only with her swift-flying fingers. Yet her fame had spread over the civilized world. The name of Laura Bridgman was a household word in the nineteenth century. That a girl, deaf, dumb, and blind from infancy, should be able to communicate her thoughts to others, write, cipher, and study like other children, was thought a miracle. People found it so hard to believe that they came in crowds to see the marvel with their own eyes. So many visitors—eleven hundred, on one occasion—appeared at the weekly exhibitions of the school that it was thought necessary to seat Laura in a little enclosure, lest her young head be turned by too much attention. Charles Dickens thus saw her. His account of his visit to the school, with a beautiful tribute to my father, is to be found in his _American Notes_. If Byron’s helmet was the symbol of the latter’s earlier labors, Laura Bridgman was the living witness of the success of his later work. She was often summoned to “Green Peace” to see foreigners of distinction, as well as to make familiar visits to the household. When I can first remember her she was a young woman in the early twenties. Her education had then been completed, but she was allowed to remain at the school, the true home of her spirit. Here every one could talk her finger language. In appearance Laura was exquisitely neat. Her brown hair was brushed perfectly smooth and braided in a coil at the nape of the neck, thus showing to advantage her shapely head. She had good features and was comely, save for the heavy white scars at her throat made by the disease—scarlet fever—which had deprived her of her senses. Green shades covered the sightless eyes. When sister Julia and I were very young we were naughty enough to tease Laura. One of us would lead her to a chair in which the other was already seated. When she attempted to sit in it she found the place occupied. Another silly joke was to pound with our feet and make such a racket that Laura, feeling the vibrations through the floor, would ask us to stop. Knowing that she was totally deaf, this seemed to us very amusing. My father’s step she knew at once. I have seen him tiptoe softly into the room where she was seated. She, not to be deceived, sprang up and followed him about the room, he walking always with the same light step and laughingly eluding her. Musical vibrations gave her real pleasure. In later years she was delighted with the present of a music-box to which she “listened” by placing her feet upon it!