208 LAMP-LIGHT SCRIEBLIKGS 



the mutes, if for no other reason, the proposed reform should be at- 

 tempted. The writer had the pleasure of conversing witli a class of 

 twelve or thirteen boys, in Berlin, Prussia, perfectly deaf, who had been 

 taught to speak distinctly. It is true, their voices were by no means 

 musical. Some of them squeaked, others grumbled ; they seemed to 

 have no control over their voice as far as the modulations of its tones 

 was concerned ; but although the instrument, in the providence of God, 

 ■was very imperfect, their teachers had been remarkably successful in 

 teaching them to play well upon it. One of them, a lad of thirteen 

 Avho could not hear even thunder, (though he could feel it), spoke in a 

 perfectly natural tone, and replied intelligently to all our questions. At 

 the same institution there were from twenty to thirty others in various 

 stages of improvement, and the cases were very rare in which the efTort 

 proved unsuccessful, and these, the Principal assured us, were generally 

 such in which there was some natural defect in the organs of speecli. 



Now this seems to be utterly impossible in our tongue.* But need 

 it continue to be so ? Raised letters have given literature to the Mind ; 

 a reform in our alphabet and orthography icould hasten the day when 

 our dumb shall speak. C. 



LAMP-LIGHT .SCRIBBLINGS OF MOON-LIGHT MUSINGS. 



On as lovely a moon-light night as ever poet fancied or Angel saw, 

 (as your romancer wouUl say,) an old cumbersome caricature of a coach, 

 driven by a drunken Jehu, rattled slowly yet noisily along the quiet 

 streets of G — . The "iron tongue of Time" had already spoken the 

 hour of ten, when we were deposited under the sign of the Spread Ea- 

 gle. As your informant was compelled to leave early next morning by 

 the western stage, he could not let the opportunity escape of seeing once 

 more the scenes consecrated to him by the sweet associations of youth. 

 But a few hundred paces from the tavern arose a majestic pile of marble 

 .splendor, reposing in solemn and impressive beauty in the silver radi- 

 ance of an unclouded moonlit-heaven. Thither, all jaded and travel- 

 worn as I was, I sallied forth, unaccompanied, except by the "still smajl 

 voice" of faithful Memory, along a gravel walk, which it seems had 

 usurped the place of the gutters, mud-holes, and all the other inconve- 



* The case of a lady who is well known to the writer, perfectly deaf and yet 

 able to converse in English, is no proof of the contrary; for this individual was 

 nineteen years of age before she began to lose her hearing, and gradually accus- 

 tomed herself to understand others by closely watching the movements of the or- 

 gans of speech, whilst she was still partly in possession of this sense. 



