The other girls may listen, too, and catch the drippings of my
wisdom. I really know little about the education of defective
children, but, thank heaven, I can put two and two together, as Susan
Nipper said. The general plan will be to train Lisa's hands and
speak to her senses in every possible way, since her organs of sense
are within your reach, and those of thought are out of it. The
hardest lesson for such a child to learn is the subordination of its
erratic will to our normal ones. Lisa's attention is the most
hopeful thing about her and encourages me more than anything else.
It is not as if there were no mental processes existing; they are
there, but in a very enfeebled state. Of course she should have been
under skilled teaching the six years, but, late as it is, we couldn't
think of giving up a child who can talk, use her right hand, dress
herself, go upon errands, recognise colours, wash dishes; who is
apparently neither vicious nor cunning, but who, on the contrary, has
lived four years under the same roof with Mrs. S. Cora Grubb without
rebellion or violence or treachery! Why, dear girls, such a task, if
it did not appeal to one on the moral, certainly would on the
intellectual, side. Marm Lisa will teach us more in a year, you may
be sure, than we shall teach her.
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