The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
General
The history of the life and adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell : $b a gentleman, who, tho' deaf and dumb, writes down any stranger's name at first sight, with their future contingencies of fortune
Campbell, Duncan, 1680?-1730; Deaf people -- Great Britain -- Biography; Occultism -- Early works to 1900; Prophets -- Great Britain -- Biography
he had many great works upon his hands at that time, he would steal from
his other studies leisure enough to complete so charitable an office, as
teaching the dumb and deaf to read and to write, and give her son, who
was by nature deprived of them, the advantages of speech, as far as art
would permit that natural defect to be supplied by her powerful
interposition.
When the mother came home, the child, who could hear no knocking, and
therefore it must be by a strange and inexplicable instinct in nature,
was the first that ran to the door, and falling in a great fit of
laughter, a thing it was not much used to before, having on the contrary
rather a melancholy cast of complexion, it clung round its mother's
knees, incessantly embracing and kissing them, as if just at that time
it had an insight into what the mother had been doing for it, and into
its own approaching relief from its misery.
When the mother came with the child in her hand to the father, to tell
him the welcome news, the child burst afresh into a great fit of
laughter, which continued for an unusual space of time; and the scene of
such reciprocal affection and joy between a wife and her own husband, on
so signal an occasion, is a thing easier to be felt by parents of a good
disposition, imagining themselves under the same circumstances, with
regard to a child they loved with fondness, than to be expressed or
described by the pen of any writer. But it is certain, whenever they
spoke of this affair, as anybody, who knows the impatience of parents
for the welfare of an only child, may guess, they must be often
discoursing it over, and wishing the time was come; the boy, who used
seldom so much as to smile at other times, and who could never hear the
greatest noise that could be made, would constantly look wishfully in
their faces and laugh immoderately, which is a plain indication that
there was then a wonderful instinct in nature, as I said before, which
made him foretaste his good fortune, and, if I may be allowed the
expression, the dawnings as it were of the second-sight, were then
pregnant within him.
To confirm this, the happy hour of his deliverance being come, and the
doctor having procured Mr. Wallis's book, came with great joy, and
desired to see his pupil; scarce were the words out of his mouth when
the child happened to come into the room, and running towards the
doctor, fell on his knees, kissed his hand eagerly, and laughed as
before, which to me is a demonstration that he had an insight into the
good which the doctor intended him.
It is certain, that several learned men, who have written concerning the
second-sight, have demonstrated by incontestable proofs, and undeniable
arguments, that children, nay, even horses and cows, see the
second-sight, as well as men and women advanced in years. But of this I
shall discourse at large in its proper place, having allotted a whole
future chapter for that same subject of second-sightedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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