''DEAF AND DUMB:' 109 



"DEAF AND DUMB.'^ 



By MABEL ELLEEY ADAMS. 



THE average man has no idea of the real meaning of the com- 

 mon adjective phrase " deaf and dumb." He occasionally 

 sees a group in some public place conversing by means of sigus 

 or the manual alphabet, and he says to himself, " Deaf and dumb." 

 Less often he comes in contact with an orally taught deaf person, 

 and either talks with him or hears others talk with him, and goes 

 away and says : " I met a deaf and dumb man to-day and heard 

 him talk ; it's wonderful, wonderful ! " quite unconscious meantime 

 that his way of expressing what he saw is also wonderful. 



Sometimes this same average man hears that a friend's child 

 has been born deaf, and if he is a little conservative he says : " Oh, 

 well, the child can be educated at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum ; 

 they teach them everything there. Many deaf and dumb peo- 

 ple are able to make a good living nowadays." If, however, 

 our average man is fully up to the times, he says : " Oh, the child 

 can be taught to talk just like other folks ; they have got a way 

 of teaching the deaf and dumb children to speak and to under- 

 stand other people by looking at the motions of the lips; so they 

 get along just about as well as though they could hear." 



All this is very crude, no doubt, but it is safe to say that nine 

 out of every ten people in ordinary life, whom circumstances have 

 never brought in contact with the deaf, have very much the same 

 ideas. To be deaf is to be unable to hear, and to be dumb is to be 

 una,ble to talk. The lack of hearing is remedied by teaching the 

 child to use his eyes and understand either signs or the motions 

 of the lips, and the lack of speech is remedied by teaching the 

 child to use his vocal organs or his hands to make others under- 

 stand, and behold! the task is accomplished, and he is "just like 

 other folks." Not one thought is given to language, to the wonder- 

 ful medium of exchange by means of which the business of life is 

 carried on, that is supposed to come by Nature, or instinct, or 

 miracle, but never by teaching. A cultured lad}', a literary woman, 

 said to me once, after seeing some deaf children and hearing them 

 go through certain vocal exercises which included every elemen- 

 tary sound in the English language : " Now, if these children can 

 make all these sounds correctly, why don't they go right on and 

 talk ? What hinders them ? " She was a bright woman, and when 

 a very short explanation had been given her, the reason flashed 

 upon her, and she said : " Why, what a fool I am ! I see, they've 

 got something to say, and the mechanical ability to say it, but no 

 language to say it in," and in that one sentence she expressed the 

 reason for being of all the institutions and schools for the deaf in 



