90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



existing between the teachers and pupils, and among the children 

 themselves. Many of the' little ones are poor, and are clothed mainly 

 by the teachers and friends of the school, and when one of them ap- 

 pears in a new dress all of her fellow-pupils rejoice with her. 



After they leave the school, which many do to engage in some em- 

 ployment, they are proud to keep up their proficiency, and encouraging 

 and curious things are heard of them. One is a teacher in a Sunday- 

 school ; one is vigorously pursuing her studies in a branch of the So- 

 ciety for Home Culture ; another practices her piano-lesson an hour 

 a day ; one boy is a promising student of wood-engraving ; and the 

 other day a lady recognized in the young girls who were talking hap- 

 pily together beside her in a horse-car two past members of the Horace 

 Mann School. 



All this is fair fruit from the labors of that Eppendorf scholar who 

 sowed his seed a hundred years ago, and it would gladden the hearts 

 of the many men who have longed to see this result from the dark- 

 ness of the middle ages until now. Separate instances have been 

 known in all time, where devoted men and women have given a life- 

 time to this work, and counted it well spent. We do not know the 

 impulse which led the Si:)anish monk, Pedro de Ponce, in Leon, to the 

 wonderful toil and patience which must have been required before 

 his four deaf-mutes talked with men in the sixteenth century, but we 

 hardly doubt that it began in the affliction of some one dear to him ; 

 for, almost always, until the feeling of duty which we owe to these 

 sufferers became so general as it is now, in the isolated cases that stand 

 out from the pages of all history we read between the lines the record 

 of a devoted love. 



Even if some of the pupils of the Horace Man School, and the simi- 

 lar institution in Northampton, should never be able to hold protracted 

 conversations ujoon all subjects, there are many sentences with which 

 they will always be able to gladden the hearts of their jDarents and 

 friends. 



As some one has wisely said, it would be well worth sustaining the 

 system if the child only learned to say " Father, mother, I love you." 

 For the parents feel the happiness of hearing one word pronounced by 

 the lips of their children ; and the father who said to the teacher that 

 he would give his ten-thousand-dollar farm if that little girl of his 

 could speak to him, echoed the greatest wish of many other hearts 

 than his. 



But the children learn more lessons than are mentioned in the school 

 reports neatness, obedience, gentleness, kindness ; and thus are the 

 teachers in many ways setting these captives free. 



