Translations:Victor of Aveyron/98/en

I printed, in large characters, on some pieces of pasteboard, two inches square, the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. I cut in a board an equal number of squares, in which I inserted the pieces of pasteboard, without, however, fastening them to it, so that I might be able to change their places at pleasure. An equal number of alphabetic characters were cast in metal; these letters were intended to be compared, by the pupil, with the printed letters, and classed in their corresponding squares. The first attempt to ascertain the efficacy of this method was made, in my absence, by Madame Guerin: I was much surprised to learn from her, on my return, that Victor distinguished all the characters, and properly classed them. He was put to trial immediately, and lie performed his task without committing the least error. Delighted with such rapid success, I was, however, far from being able to explain the cause of it; and it was not, till some days afterward, that it appeared to me to arise from the manner in which our pupil proceeded to this classification. In order to render it easier for him, he thought of a little expedient, which freed him in this task from exercising either memory, comparison, or judgment. When the board was put into his hands, he did not wait till we took the metallic letters from their squares; he withdrew them himself, and piled them in his hand, according to the order of their classification; so that the last letter of the alphabet was found, after the board was completely stripped, to be the uppermost of the pile. It was with this that he commenced, and with the last of the pile that lies finished; beginning at the end of the hoard, and invariably proceeding from right to left, this is not all; this employment was susceptible to improvement; for sometimes the pile in his hand would fall down, and the characters he disarranged; then it was necessary to put them in order, merely by the efforts of attention. The twenty-four letters were placed in four ranks, six in each; it was then more simple to remove them by their ranks, and to replace them in the same manner, so as not to proceed to the stripping of the second pile till the first was re-established.