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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



ladies, such as needlework, etc. To me she 

 talked of riding (she was a great horsewoman), 

 billiards, and other topics she thought would in- 

 terest me, explaining the difference between their 

 game of billiards and ours, giving me the names 

 of the different woods the cues were made of, 

 and conversing with me as freely as though she 

 had been a hearing person ; indeed, several times 

 during the day my wife forgot that she was 

 speaking to one deaf, so accurately did this deaf 

 young lady read everything that was said to her 

 when she could see the speaker's face ; but occa- 

 sionally my wife, forgetting this, turned away, and 

 of course received no answer. Yet had she been 

 sent to a "French" system school, all speech 

 would have been lost. There would have been 

 no attempt made to keep up, or restore, the 

 speech of a child so young ; and one more would 

 have been added to the long list of the dumb. 



The next and last case of a semi-mute — well 

 known, but which did not come under our own 

 observation — is that of a man who went through 

 part of the civil war in the United States as a 

 private soldier. He spoke so well, that for some 

 time the secret of his deafness was undiscovered. 

 One night, however, he was challenged by a sen- 

 try, and, taking no notice, was wounded. This 

 led to discovery, and he had to leave the army. 

 His early history is interesting and instructive, 

 and I will give it almost in his own words as told 

 to a friend of mine. He lost hearing through 

 fever at five years of age, but retained his speech. 

 His friends communicated with him by writing. 

 One day, sitting on the floor, he watched his fa- 

 ther and a neighbor talking, and when the neigh- 

 bor left, he looked up and said, " Did not Mr. 



say so-and-so ? " " Yes," said his father ; 



"how do you know — who told you? " " Father, 

 I saw his lips move, and I guessed that was what 

 he said." " You had better practise watching 

 people's lips," his father said. The "German" 

 system was then unknown in America ; but the 

 boy did practise, both with his family and by 

 studying his own lips before the glass. The only 

 difficulty being that he soon discovered a differ- 

 ence in his own pronunciation of words ending in 

 " tion," as he called it " ti-on," and such like 

 spellings, where the sound and the spelling did 

 not agree. At twelve years of age he was sent 

 to the American asylum at Hartford, and for a 

 whole year he could make absolutely nothing out 

 of the signs and finger-talking used around him. 

 This made him very wretched. He continued to 

 say his lessons aloud to the master, who ques- 

 tioned him on his fingers. One day, going to his 



master for the meaning and pronunciation of 

 some new and difficult word, the master, in a fit 

 of impatience at his not pronouncing it rightly, 

 wrote the word down, spelling it phonetically ; 

 the boy at once gave it correctly, and his delight 

 and joy were intense. Here was the key of 

 knowledge. From that day he always went to 

 others with his new words, with the request, 

 " Spell it wrong — spell it as it sounds," and he 

 had no more difficulty. He married a deaf-and- 

 dumb woman, and had several children, all of 

 whom heard. When these children were old 

 enough they were sent to school. Very soon a 

 complaint came to the father from the teacher, 

 his children were so remarkably impudent and 

 naughty they would write nonsense on their slates 

 instead of their exercises. They had been pun- 

 ished, but continued to bring such sentences as 

 this, " Man horse black on riding was," and, if 

 he did not use his authority to stop this, the 

 children must be expelled. He at once wrote, 

 explaining that they had been in the habit of 

 communicating chiefly with their deaf-and-dumb 

 mother, who employed signs, and this inverted 

 language was the consequence. If no notice 

 were taken, but the children allowed to mix free- 

 ly with their schoolfellows, he had no doubt their 

 language would right itself, and so the event 

 proved. 



We now come to the last of the three classes 

 of the so-called " deaf and dumb " — the toto- 

 congenital. How these educated on the " Ger- 

 man " system were able, after leaving school, 

 to get on in the world by articulation and lip- 

 reading, was, you may remember, the great object 

 of our inquiries. This point is all the more im- 

 portant now, as the advocates of the "French" 

 system allow in theory, however little they carry 

 it out in practice, the value of teaching articula- 

 tion to most of the semi-mute and semi-deaf, but 

 still deny the use of attempting it with toto-con- 

 genitals, except in very rare instances. 



Now as to those who have left the "German" 

 system schools. We saw specimens of these, 

 some in workshops, some milliners, some married 

 to hearing persons, some at home with their pa- 

 rents, some master tradesmen, etc. ; all, I again 

 remark, were toto-congenital — such as would be 

 termed in America, France, nnd England, " deaf 

 and dumb." The result was encouraging beyond 

 anything we had dared to hope. Had we ex- 

 pected to find old pupils that "one would not 

 have known from hearing persons," we should 

 have been disappointed. There may be such, 

 but we have never been able to trace any, nor 



