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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 22, 1922)
7. V and !kSSS "I See With My Nose and Hear With My Fingers;' Willetta Huggins Says; But Doctors Explain That Her Prodigious i THE STHXDAY OREGOINTAX, POHTLATTO, ITANTJAItY 22. 1022 n 1 h n Willetta Huggins receives telephone cmitt by placing her thumb on the delicate sounding dink at the receiver. w rlLLETTA HUGGINS. a l-year- old blind and deaf Inmate of the state Institution for the blind at Janeavllle. Wis., just now Is the cynosure of scientists in all parts of the world. She sees with her nose nd hears with her fingers. While It Is a well-known fact that nature restores "balance" to a persqn de prived of the functioning: of some major faculty to a surprising; degree, never before, those who have exam toed the girl declare, has the equilib rium which makes life tolerable to a blind and deaf person demonstrated Itself In such an amazing degree. She presents the ultimate of the truth of Eterno's famous observation that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb." Without sight or hearing, apparent ly doomed to grope about in a world soundless and llghtless, this little girl, through some strange occurrence somewhere In the delicate nerve ma chinery of her body, is able to be bout, to "see," to "hear." to Indulge In childish games, to take from life that otherwise would be more terri ble than Imagination can picture, nough of enjoyment and sweetness to make her existence worth while. And through her, through a close ob servation, scientists are hoping they will get a clue that will enable others slmilarly afflicted to overcome the handicap which disease or sacrifice in war brought about. The blind and . , . deaf In all parts of ' are patiently beard of her. They are patiently waiting. One often visualizes a blind person as unkempt, groping about a room at snail's pace or pitifully and laborl ously spelling out a verse from the Bible by means of a raised alphabet. A deaf person often conveys the Im pression of dullness, Yiiouth agape, an acousticon suspended from the neck. But this little girl presents no such spectacle. Until she was 10 years old he was normal. But she was slow, disinterested, and plodding In her school work. Then her eyes began to fall. At the age of 10 she was sent to the school for the blind at Janesvllle, from her home at Chippewa Falls. ToM that it would only be a short time before the light would flicker cut, she learned the point system taught to the blind for reading. Then came misfortune. Early In October, 1911, while apparently in good health, Willetta was playing with some of tip rlnmnAlAI. A nana JLflfl shiver went through her body. It rendered her deaf. A year passed and another m'sfortune. Blttlnsr In the sewing- room learning to make an apron. In October, 1920, there came a flash. The irl cried out. She was blind. But, today, she walks scout her room with the confidence and cer tainty of step of one not afflicted. Outside on the street she seems a nor mal girl. Indulging In strenuous Karnes, such as kicking a football. Nor does she need an acousticon to determine what speakers say. To begin a conversation one simply Indi cates with a nudge to attract her at tention. She then places her finger- UPS on tne speaaera inroai, uirccur over the larynx or sound-box. Or, sometimes, when she is demonstrat ing how marvelous her perceptions axe, she will bold a ten-foot pole with one end against the head of the per son with whom she is talking and she' has no trouble understanding every thing said. Nor is there' the slightest suspicion of hoax about her prodigious powers. Governor John J. Blaine of Wisconsin recently examined her. He asked her the color of his suit of clothes. She smelled the suit and promptly replied, and correctly, that It was a gray and black mixture. Major E. A. FUzpat rlck. secretary of the Wisconsin state board of education, also experimented with her. He handed her two bills. She rubbed them and announced that one was a a and the other a $10 bill. This demonstrated to what a fine point she has developed the "touch" of the blind. It is through her fine sense of touch that she "hears." Much as the dell cate diaphragm on a phonographic record receives and impresses on the wax record the varying vibrations that make up the sound ot human speech or song, so this little girl re ceives on a natural recorder located somewhere within her body the vibra- tlons that she recognizes as audible speech. Because of the intensification of her sense of touch and smell, tbe So they had bees watching for Mrs. devours each moment almost before when he spoke of the moor people's don, like a high-colored print of the greatest scientiflo minds are seeking Tolley to pass on that road without, one can grasp at it. It was more a sense of the art of a situation. The conventional, fox-hunting squire, bel ts explain why it la. and by what Probably the whole Moor was watch- certain inertia, the push of an. idea barrenness of it made this drams, of lowing himself to a, conviction of his wkJ Blip ''." ' ' i ' ) ill Ok I'lf - " - - . v f nV VA TV A f-f k f tr - f 1j s in i-j , -rr - a v fi . -v - ' v ViYv ? . r -I r -Ci. 1 - v'J( ' - . "On the street site seems almost a normal sjlrl, IndnlgrlnK la such s;ames aa klchlns; a football.'' mysterious process, that nature brings about the almost inevitable equillb- Hum which s mercifully attendant on affliction. And after the conclu- sion that the false "Bight" and "hear- l"B" are th "3ult ot. Prcep- tion due to an Inexplicable function ing of the otic ganglion In the brain. scientists and doctors then arrive at the stQne waU agalnat whlch inquir- ing mentality has butted itself vainly what Is a nerve? Of course, in the light of recent re- search, well-informed readers gener- ally know that sight and life itself is vibration. We do not see an 1 1 . rr ix KlanMot tall It a XV m fl 1 1 Just a'g lut8 Wmetta t eela tns nu. meral "6" on the surrency. Every- thing Is vibrating, a book, a piece of steel, even the human body In its every part. And when the vibration o( forelfrn bodle9 or eTen parts of our . own bodies come Into direct contact THE FULFILLER (Continued From Page 8.) lh. I tlan,. rw.wn A wilt the-wisp of a light bobbed at the te- nd 1,9 c,m9 "ast ot 11 w " lantern carriedi by El'a Tolley. "I was awaiting for you to come back along," tho boy babbled, loom ing above the yellow olrole of light in grotesque eagerness. "IMd you see un7" "I met a gentleman," Maynard smiled. "Just lik me, he looks," EOiaa pur sued. And Afaynard with amusd chag rin, realized that he, too, must ane swer on that sing-le point of agree ment of all those who had been De nig.hted ln the. wood. "It cannot have been the came one, then; the man I met looked pretty much like myself.' Maynard slept late the next morn ing; so late that ln Mrs. Stook'a de meanor as she brought his breakfast there lurked a certain adamant of censure. "Perhaps you will par dins It's not being quite so good as might be, eir," she said, with elaborate civility, "see ing how it's stood. It was with Indefinable depression that Maynard sat down to the table, irritated that on this, his last day there. Dartmoor should turn a frown ing face. The witcheries of tho night had fled and the moor was grimly material under a smother of gray rain. Tet there was a sense of stir upon the road outside as, one after another, the farm carts went by ln the direc tion of Princestown. Stolidly padding they went, their drivers bent against :he storm, and Maynard remembered that this was the day of rent paying to that overshadowing Duchy. Catching his glance. Mrs. Stook an swered It with an almost uncanny in tuition. "Mrs. Tolley Is lata today, sir. Bnt then, well she might be. poor soul. seeing that notorious rain and that she has to traipse it on her own two leet.' nLtra, BUT A GOOD SEAMSTRESS. with the delicate nerve machinery of the eye there results In the brain the vlbrlitory effect which we call a pie- ture. When person becomes blind It means that either by disease or direct Injury or by the malformation of bone due to Imperfect cranial ossification in the first few weeks or months or years of life, the delicate sense of vibratory perception of this partic- ular nerve has been destroyed. Then 1 1 a I"(,firdin(T t n 1lr. .7 n m TV Krichbaum. former head of the New Jersey Stats Medical association, and a physician of wide repute, that the . "equilibrium" Is set up by a mysterl- ous functioning of the sympathetlo otlo ganglion. the medical books This ganglion. BY G. SAXBY Ing, in that hidden sense of the dra matic of which the young stranger had spoken. Aiaynara could visualize U16 uirong aooui ids inn. laciiuru u i ine xuuey rent, wun its BuggeB- among their steaming ponies, speak- moorland people, he knew; that des- ton of something older even that the leg stolidly of other things while psrate clinging to the position of ,oUi more potent than the crown lt their eyes strained furtively down the landholder, laoking which they must B8ir. A fage touch would have road for a Bight of that solitary Blnk tn Ignominy of eervtco to marre(j t2ie olassio severity of its out woman, ethers. lines; even death would have been "Aye, good and late, she is," Mrs. H1 rap on the door echoed back to too final, for the harrow of this was Stook nodded, not without a certain him with almost ridiculousness; even y,. going on. relish. "Most usual it's she as la first, but today" Her pause had the effect of drama, too, reminding him of the things she was not saying; that, to the whole, watching Moor, today was to be "the test" for Mrs. Tolley's mysterious rent. And last night against this dreary smother of the rain swept road, last night seemed Irretrievably gone, al most to be ashamed of under the light of day. That spectral wood, with its mysteries cf moon and ensorcelments of mist, was wiped out. Even though he walked to It he would find nothing but a few acres of rocks and drip ping oaks, stark under the weeping skies. He had an uncomortable con viction of having made an ass of him self ln his conversation with that stranger. There were so many other things he might have said; his brain filled with them, scintillating sen tences, all -marked with the dismal sign of the unuttered and too late. The confines of the room Irked him better the driving wet outside. If only to escape the Inane stare of those pnrple china spaniels on the mantel, Except the road, all sense of direction was wiped out, the Tors all hidden ln the arar wrack that nermltted only a narrow circle of vision. Princes- town, with its rent day throng, re- pelled him, so perforce he turned down hill towards the vale of Dart. Dart bridge. Its elm trees looming through the obscuring rain; beyond them, the lane to Hanger-Down. Why he turned into it Maynard could hard- lv say; it was certainly ln no inten- tloa of renewing his attack upon the Tolley chslr. That also seemed to be gone; like all the time he had spent here on the Moor, swallowed up by that swift pursuit of the past which Power Comes From the Otic Ganglion in Her Brain tell us, is "small, oval-shaped," and "of a reddish-gray color." There are two of them In the brain, two of them in the pelvic structure, and one In the center of the body. The presence In the body of this single ganglion was made known universally by Bob Fltzslmmons, whose blow to the solar plexus ganglion of James J. Corbett gave him the heavyweight pugllistla championship. These five ganglions are the sym- n&thetlrt IlArVn CATltera. Tt In A. Hi?- nlf leant fact that, laterally, the brain ganglion Joins with tne sensory roots and, medially, with the auditory nerve. "And there you have it," explains Jr. K-ricnDaum. "When this little girl lost her sight and hearing she that had become almost a habit, which propelled him to the door of the farm. Rain lashed, crouched against the lee of the down, the place looked more hopeless than ever, and he wondered that any could be found w.,,t - ...ma i.-un. if Mrs. Tolley were within, how would he' explain his coming here again when he could not explain It even to himself. The extraordinary circles of life and their- unseen connections. Elsie Lathrop, the Benbrook gallery. Mrs. Ira and himself, 7O00 miles away, knocking on the door of this Isolated Dartmoor cottage. It was Ellas who opened to him, the sterile childishness of his face underlaid by a glow of excitement, which faded at sight of Maynard. "Eh, It's you. TJs thought as "t was Squire Bragdon come down from Princestown." Then the glow mount ed again m recovered confidence. "But he'll come, you'll see. In little while he'll be a-grummaglng down so , fast as un's mare can trot. Come you It was the same room' in which Maynard had first seen the Tolley chair, even-as he saw it now, lording It aver the threadbare neatness of Its surroundings. The sight of it awoke '"f wnen the agent nastiea in, snea again In him the desire to carry it his overcoat, the plump florid- off and enshrine it in some more worthy place. Then, as he looked at the woman, even the chair faded, for it was she who was the real pres- ence. As she sat there, black clad, bleakly immobile, she was like some priestess at a temple which. Its altars already flickering to extinction, waited mutely for the touch of the vandal. For her that touch naa al- ready come, he felt; she was merely as a mourner who waits the removal of the body. He could Imagine her and El:as, with their meager baggage piled on a neighbor's cart, passing dispossessed out into the rain, the poignancy of the'r going slimed by the grin of that tragedy of pigs. Yet he realized, too, something of what that young stranger had meant ! (l'J V'" The deaf girl shows hew she hears tbronsh a tea-foot wooden pole. brought Into play the nerve power In th() oUJ KAngUon wnich ves to her perception the ability to feel a sound and to see objects by touch and smelL" Dr. Krichbaum was asked if it were possible that the twisting of nerve fibers, much as the crossing of nhoco-. .tuit.1. nhim over wires used for other purpose might not have added sensitiveness to the nerves of touch and smell of the Janesvllls girl. '"Nothing Is beyond the range of possibility." he replied. "But suon a thing could not be proved unless an the Toilers a perfect thing, rooted In o!l and tradition old as that ageless Hoof and the centuries of the crown. He had been viewing It from his own angle of the ohalr, but he saw now. that to these people of the waste the crux or it was tnat quarterly miracle It was Ellas who saved tn mo ment from becoming intolerable; gas Ing out through the rain-drenched panes, he gave a cry of triumph. "I told you so It's him. I'd swear to Squire Bragdon's mare If 'twas so dark as the pit 'lsself. Now us'll see." The rattle of wheels down the lane, a splash of hoofs in its pools; the feeling of an overbearing personality about to descend on them, a grating voice with a sort of Jovial snarl ln it. "Hah so that's you, Ellas, Is it 7 What's all this hey? Mrs. Tolley not got her rent what?" There was no change ln the woman. Looking at her carven calm, Maynard dimly saw the high gods at whose altars she had so long been servitor. The grim lords of poverty, anxiety, and Inexorable decay, the only flame of appeasement left on their shrine being that unavailing witch fire of Ellas' optimism. It was almost a re- ness of his face heightened by a var nish of rain. "What this, Mrs. TolleyT- he railed at her, ln a savage humor. "Tour black maglo hocus-pocus gone back on you heyT Two hundred years ago and you'd have been burned as a witch. What d'ye mean by bringing me all this way! w hy wertn t you at f rincestowni As he listened, Maynard half for- gave, seeing that the man was se- cretly ill at ease, blustering against those superstitions which his post- tion forbade him to recognize but none the less ingralnetl in him by a lifetime of the moor. Looking at the three figures against the background of that room, ho wondered again how he himself came to be there. Brag- mt6 GMIGUON Drswlnr ahowtna' the appearanee and location of the otic aransllon, the srmpathetie nerve center aatd to have the power of transferrins; lost nerve sensations. operation on the subject were made. I am rather inclined to give all the credit for the added perception to that natural adjuster, the otlo gan glion." Health Commissioner Royal E. Cope land of New York city also passed lightly over the possibility of crossed nerves. He said that such an ex planation reminded him of the story of the man who wanted to prove that a grasshopper heard with his legs. He placed the Insect on a table and beat a tattoo on the surface. The grasshopper leaped off. He recap tured it, pulled off Its legs and beat the tattoo again. "See," he remarked, "not having its legs the grasshopper can't hear and, consequently, doesn't Jump!" Commissioner Copelasd called at tention to the fact that when one closes the eyes and walks toward a wall, concentrating the mind on tht object of the stunt, one can "feel" the wall ahead. "It is this sense that becomes In tensified in the blind," the commis sioner explained. Even thougn it sounds paradoxical. Wllletta's ability to tell color by smell is really not different than her hearing with her sense of touch. Eye specialists, physicists and spectra chrome therapeutics alike tell us that there is no such thing as color, that what we know as red or green or blue or violet or yellow Is nothing more than the effect of the varying vibra tion of objects upon the so-called visual centers. The eye "feels" these vibrations Just as Willetta feels the proper estate. Ellas, with a pallor almost luminous in Its expectancy, as though he looked for a shower of fairy gold from the cracked celling. Mrs. Tollejr as the woman rose, Maynard almost shrank from the des olation of her face. "There Is nothing ln the lease that compels us to come to Princestown, Mr. Bragdon." she was saying. "It reads that the rent shall be paid each quarter day, upon demand. It has not been demanded of me yet." "What's this, a female lawyer a woman Daniel ln judgment, what?" Bragdon bullied back. "Not demand hey? Well, I demand It. Have you got it? Tell me that, woman." "One moment." she said. Maynard never forgot the coldness of the fingers that closed about his wrist, nor the sights and em ells of the little hallway Into which they drew him. The drive and lash of the rain outside, the chill drafts, the odor of boiling cabbage mingling with the pervading scent of drenched heather and peat. "Mrs. Tolley " he began, fumbling in his pockets, but she stayed him with a gesture, her speech coming with the grating clearness of a stream of bitter waters over a bed of stones. "You spoke about the chair, Mr. Maynard. If you are still willing and can make a small payment now about five pounds." It was more than a pound of flesh those grim lords of her life were de manding of her. It was her very hope itself, not for herself, but for the one to whom her life was given. The last token of Ellas' descent in a confusion of tongues within him Maynard found himself wondering how much of this might be the out come of Ellas' babble of the evening before and that extraordinary Inter view in the wood. There came to him an unavailing regret as he remembered his outburst of demand for possession of the chair. He could almost hear It now, break ing out into that fire-reddened circle of mist with a certain irrevocable ness. It came upon him with added dismay that. In all their conversation together, that young stranger had told him nothing that he had not al ready known. "Bo I cannot pay you half of what the chair la worth," he heard himself saying to the woman, aware that It K X J & th! t 4 By resting the pole on his head a : talkinK to Willetta employs "sounding; board" power of kull. the the vibrations in the throat of the voles of a speaker. Her optlo nerve being dead. Will etta, apparently, feels through her nerve of smell the delicate vibra tions which, when coming In contact with the sensitive eye machinery, pro duce the natural phenomenon called sight. It might be compared to th case of the groundmole. It has no eyes. It would be Impossible to locate eyes in any part of the body that would render efficient service to aa object as closely confined as the mole always is. So, the sense of sight U located Id little nerve ends that are as numerous on the surface of the body as the nerve ends which give ts human beings the sensation of touch., was his own pride of conscience which was now speaking. "Twenty pounds is my limit, and you could sell it for much more." He had an extraordinary distaste at seeming to advantage himself by the necessities of this woman. He could see how, for him. In the years to come, the shadow of this hour would lie across the chair, even though it stood gloriously ln the Ben brook memorial. He felt that shadow falling, like a sort of ellme, athwart the path to Elsie Lathrop, the path that, above all, he would tread with feet unstained. It was such a meager tragedy, after all. so unworthy of the forces he seemed to sense looming behind it A chair, a thing of wood only, and yet to this woman it was the symbol of all that she had ever hoped. "Meanwhile, as a loan here's a bank note for ten pounds' he went rapidly on. "O, never mind the loan," be burst out In a recklessness of self disgust. "For heaven's sake, take It." It was almost hatred which looked at him out of the woman's eyes, the last flare of that half-Insane pride of the solitary which she was even then sacrificing: to those universal Implac abilities. It burned Into Maynard's brain with a conviction that what ever she said would be so. There was an lnescapabiltty about it all. They would each give themselves what they wanted; she, her rent; he, the chair; and. the differing manner of their giving almost proved that the gift was in. each case really from themselves. "Twenty poundw I will take for the chair. No other way the Tolleys have not yet come to charity." Not even her pride could disguise the clutching eagerness of her grasp upon that slip of crackling paper. Gaunt, white, she reeled, stayed only by her grasp upon the handle of the door behind her. Then she entered the room again, and through the closing panels came Bragdon's roar, Its discomfiture tinctured by his half delight that the moorland legend had been once more upheld. "Good God she's done it. Mrs. Tolley has her rent." Then Ellas' voice, high pitched, bubbling with undefeated faith. "Yes fay, I told you so. I asked un for It and what ho gives you've got to get." (Copyright, . 1922, by Charles 6axby4
