SPEECH RESTORED AT CRICKET.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 2041, 3 October 1913, Page 6

SPEECH RESTORED AT CRICKET.

DUMB BOY'S SHOUTS. Londou, August 30. After brii!g umb for 10 years, a Lee s youth foun' ! the power of speech restored to him 'iurihg the excitement of a cricket match. Not less remarkable than the occurrence itself was the boy's in concealing the restoration of the gift of speech from ali around him until he had written a letter to his mother telling her the joyful news. The youth, Frederick Dennison. 19, the son of a miner, went with some inmates of the luvalid Children's S ciety of Leeils to join a Boy Scouts' camp at Harewoo', near the city. A c icket match was arrange*, and Dennison, w'ile batting, in nis excitement to "steal" a run. lo^n 1 himself trying to shout, ami even thought he heard his own voics.

Mu-jh puzzled, he stole away to some woo s when the match was over, and there in solitude he fo nn that his voice hai really been rest red to him. For a long time he remained talking to himself among the trees, *;ow shouting with delig t, an! then almost crying with the joy of the thought of how pleased his mother would te. "TLen, 1- says Denuison, "I went back to camp, and without letting anyone else know whfct hai happened I wrote to my mother. I cos Id hardly sleep at night for thinking that I could speak agiin." Next day Decuison surprised the Scoutmaster by suddenly speaking to him. There is no impediment in the lad's gspeech, and the voice seems to gein strength day by > ay. Dennison became dumb after a bad attack of influenza 10 years ago. A doctor pre iicted that ho would probably regain his speech, even after a lapse of years. Several similar cases of recovery of lost faculties by shock of excitement have been recorded in recent years. Last February a young man it Ashford, Kent, recovered both speech an » hearing by the shock of his sisetr's death. A lab arer, who lost his speech during a fit, recovered it after another tit six weeks late. A yocng man in Croydon Workhocse, who ha < been dumb for seven yea s, recovered his speech through the explosion of a soda-water syph n Five months a o the Daily Mail reco ded the case of a Manchester girl who recovered her sight while weeping bitterly at a graveside