'Frisco Has Child Linguist Prodigy

1910

SAN FRANCISCO. — Leland Stanford University is to acquire a child prodigy of whom quite as great things are expected as of Harvard's boy wonder, William James Sidis. In this case the prodigy is a girl, Winifred Sackville Stoner, better known to her familiars as Cherie. Her mother is a daughter of the late Lord Sackville West, ambassador from England in one of the Cleveland administrations, and her father is Col. J. B. Stoner of the Marine hospital service.

She is now aged eight years, and as a linguist is in a class by herself. Her knack for poetry enabled her to print a book of 52 pages called "Jingles" when she was five. At the age of four she was proficient enough in Esperanto to receive from the founder of that composite language a medal for proficiency. She had heard this tongue from infancy, as her mother is a recognized authority in it.

In addition she speaks and thinks in English, French, Spanish and Latin, and she can speak well enough for conversational purposes Japanese, Russian, German, Polish and Italian. While accumulating this varied vocabulary she has gone along at a precocious rate in other studies and has had her full share of outdoor romping. Dolls are still her companions when the weather keeps her in.

"Her advancement is simply due to the way she was educated," her mother said. "I began when she was three weeks of age by placing beautiful pictures on the walls of her nursery. From the first she was accustomed to the best literature. We did not recite silly nursery rhymes to her, but only the best. Instead of giving her the stories usually told to children I read to her from the Bible and from mythology. She had Latin from the cradle.

"At three months I read to Cherie from the Latin writers and recited for her from such poems as 'Crossing the Bar.' At eight months she began to talk. At the age of one year, she could scan from Virgil and she read before she was two. I was teaching her the language all the time.

"At three she could operate a typewriter. By its use she learned to spell and also to memorize what she was writing. It was by copying poems and articles on the machine that she learned much that she knows. When she was at this age Puck accepted and printed a little poem of hers. Afterward she became a regular contributor to St. Nicholas. She did not learn to write with the pen until she was four. We have always made play of her work. Games similar to 'Authors' were devised for history and mythology."

Note: The article at Wikipedia says she was born in 1902 and died in 1983. She had a "Jr." on her name, as her mother was also Winifred Sackville Stoner.