第5期

I am told that while I was still in long dresses I showed many signs of an eager, self-asserting disposition.

Everything that I saw other people do I insisted upon imitating.

At six months I could pipe out How d'ye, and one day I attracted every one's attention by saying Tea, tea, tea quite plainly.

Even after my illness I remembered one of the words I had learned in these early months.

It was the word water, and I continued to make some sound for that word after all other speech was lost.

I ceased making the sound wah-wah only when I learned to spell the word.

They tell me I walked the day I was a year old.

My mother had just taken me out of the bath-tub and was holding me in her lap, when I was suddenly attracted by the flickering shadows of leaves that danced in the sunlight on the smooth floor.

I slipped from my mother's lap and almost ran toward them.

The impulse gone, I fell down and cried for her to take me up in her arms.