ze her mother. She could never pronounce that word which is the
first that children utter and the last which soldiers murmur when they
are dying on the field of battle. She sometimes tried to talk, but she
produced nothing but incoherent sounds.

"When the weather was fine, she laughed continually, and emitted low
cries which might be compared to the twittering of birds; when it rained
she cried and moaned in a mournful, terrifying manner, which sounded
like the howling of a dog before a death occurs in a house.

"She was fond of rolling on the grass, as young animals do, and of
running about madly, and she would clap her hands every morning, when
the sun shone into her room, and would insist, by signs, on being
dressed as quickly as possible, so that she might get out.

"She did not appear to distinguish between people, between her mother
and her nurse, or between her father and me, or between the coachman and
the cook. I particularly liked her parents, who were very unhappy on her
account, and went to see them nearly every day. I dined with them quite
frequently, which enabled me to remark that Bertha (they had called her
Bertha) seemed to recognize the various dishes, and to prefer some to
others. At that time she was twelve years old, but as fully formed
in figure as a girl of eighteen, and taller than I was. Then the idea
struck me of developing her greediness, and by this means of cultivating
some slight power of discrimination in her mind, and to force her, by
the diversity of flavors, if not to reason, at any rate to arrive at
instinctive distinctions, which would of themselves constitute a kind
of process that was necessary to thought. Later on, by appealing to her
passions, and by carefully making use of those which could serve our
purpose, we might hope to obtain a kind of reaction on her intellect,
and by degrees increase the unconscious action of her brain.

"One day I put two plates before her, one of soup, and the other of very
sweet vanilla cream. I made her taste each of them successively, and
then I let her choose for herself, and she ate the plate of cream. In a
short time I made her very greedy, so greedy that it appeared as if the
only idea she had in her head was the desire for eating. She perfectly
recognized the various dishes, and stretched out her hands toward those
that she liked, and took hold of them eagerly, and she used to cry when
they were taken from her. Then I thought I would try and