GENERAL MEETING. 73 
speaking people the less desire does he have to converse in German. 
The practice of the English language prevents progress in the 
aquisition of German. I have known of English people who have 
lived for twenty years in Germany without acquiring the language. 
If our American school boy desires to become familiar with the 
German language, he must resolutely avoid the society of English- 
speaking people. He then finds that the mental effort involved in 
conversation becomes less and less, until, finally, he learns to think 
in German, and his difficulties cease. 
Now consider the case of a deaf boy just graduated from an 
institution where the sign language has been employed as.a means 
of communication. His vernacular is different from that of the 
people by whom he is surrounded. He thinks in the gesture lan- 
guage and has to go through a mental process of translation before 
he can understand what is said or written to him in English, and 
before he can himself speak or write in English what he desires to 
say. He finds himself in America, in the same condition as that 
of the American boy in Germany. If he avoids association with 
those who use the sign language, and courts the society of hearing 
persons, the mental effort involved in conversation becomes less and 
less, and finally he learns to think in English and his difficulties 
cease. 
But such a course involves great determination and perseverance 
on the part of the deaf boy, and few, indeed, are those who succeed. 
Not only do the other deaf-mutes in his locality have the same 
vernacular as his own, but they were his school fellows, and they 
have a common recollection of pleasant years of childhood spent 
in each other’s society. Can it be wondered at, therefore, that the 
vast majority of the deaf graduates of our institutions keep up 
acquaintance with one another in adult life? The more they com- 
municate with one another the less desire they have to associate 
with hearing persons, and the practice of the gesture language 
forms an obstacle to further progress in the acquisition of the 
English language. 
These two causes (a) previous exclusive acquaintance with one 
another in the same school, and (6) a common knowledge of a form 
of language specially adapted for the communication of the deaf 
with the deaf, operate to attract together into the large cities large 
numbers of deaf persons, who form a sort of deaf community or 
society, having very little intercourse with the outside world. 
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