THE HORACE MANN SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF. 85 



faithless days. It was opened under tlie name of " Boston School for 

 Deaf Mutes," in November, 1869, with twenty-five pupils. Two re- 

 movals have been made since that time, but the eighty members com- 

 prising the school are now pleasantly located in the present building, 

 which contains eight class-rooms, a reception-room, and play-room. 



The name of the school was changed in 1877, because the pupils 

 who were learning to speak objected to being called " mutes " ; a preju- 

 dice which the city very wisely considered. As early as 1843 ]Mr. 

 Horace Mann, then Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Educa- 

 tion, described in one of his reports the German method of teaching 

 articulation, and urged its adoption here. It was a suggestion which, 

 as Dr. Howe said, " took twenty years to bear fruit," but it was grace- 

 fully remembered in changing the name of the school which now 

 teaches that method with marked success. It is both a city and a 

 State institution, and in that way has some advantages over an ordi- 

 nary public school ; a longer recess, for example, and but one session 

 instead of two. 



And in this cheerful place, in an atmosphere of encouragement and 

 affection, the children gladly stay during five hours of the day ; while 

 the teachers, who are enthusiasts in their work, patiently try to fit them 

 to take their places more equally in the struggle of life. 



The work is very slow. When we remember that most of these 

 pupils have never heard a sound, and do not know what it is, that 

 they have no communication with the world except by pantomime, 

 and then remember that the end aimed at is to make them speak the 

 English language, so that any one can understand them, and that they 

 must learn to read from the movements of his lips whatever a hear- 

 ing person chooses to say to them, the tremendous toil will be faintly 

 realized. 



From the time in the last century when the first government insti- 

 tutions for the deaf and dumb were founded simultaneously in Ger- 

 many and France, the methods of instruction have been different in 

 those usually antagonistic countries. 



The Abbe de I'Epee contented himself with the sign-language, and 

 his idea is still the ruling one in the French school, for its defenders 

 hold that the thinking and reasoning qualities are better brought out 

 with a language which, when once learned with comparative ease, allows 

 the mind free play, than with a system where the whole powers of the 

 pupil must be given for years to expression. 



On the other hand, Heinicke, of Eppendorf, believed that the dumb 

 could be taught to speak, and this has been the principle of the German 

 school from the beginning. There is no doubt but the latter method 

 would place its pupils upon a better footing with their fellow-men, 

 from whom the sign-language must separate them to a great extent, 

 but to become general it is necessary that in a majority of cases it 

 should be a pronounced success. In the instances which have come 



