58 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
I have been told by one who has acquired this art that when intro- 
duced to strangers their speech is more readily understood if they 
are not aware they are speaking to one who cannot hear. The 
moment they are told they commence to speak slowly and open 
their mouths to an unnatural extent, thus rendering their articula- 
tion partially unintelligible. The change brought about by the 
knowledge that the listener could not hear was sometimes sudden and 
great. 
Ihave lately made an examination of the visibility of all the 
words in our language contained in a small pocket dictionary, and 
the result has assured me that there are glorious possibilities in the 
way of teaching speech-reading to the deaf, if teachers will give 
special attention to the subject. 
One of the results of my investigation has been that the ambigui- 
ties of speech are confined to the little words, chiefly to monosylla- 
bles. The longer words are nearly all clearly intelligible. The 
reason is obvious, for the greater number of elements there are in a 
word the less likelihood is there that another word can be found 
that presents exactly the same outline to the eye. 
We need never be afraid, therefore, of using long words to a deaf 
child, if they are within his comprehension. We are apt to have 
the idea that short words will be simpler, and we sometimes try to 
compose sentences consisting as much as possible of monosyllabic 
words, under the impression that such words are easy for the pupil 
to pronounce and read from the mouth. It is more common, there- 
fore, to present such sentences to beginners than to more advanced 
pupils. Now, I do not mean to say that these sentences may not be 
easier for a child to pronounce, but the words used are the most 
ambiguous to the eye. Such a simple word as “ man,” for instance, 
is homophenous with no less than thirteen other words. 
A few years ago I dictated a string of words to some pupils, with 
the object of testing whether they judged by context or were able 
to distinguish words clearly by the eye. The results are instruct- 
ive. Among the words dictated occurred the following: “ Hit— 
rate— ferry — aren’t —hat— four — that — reason — high — knit— 
donned—co.” I told the pupils not to mind whether they under- 
stood what I said or not, but simply to write down what they thought 
the words looked like, and what do you think they wrote? Upon 
examining their slates I found that nearly every child had written 
the following sentence: “It rained very hard, and for that reason 
