GENERAL MEETING. 81 
Hill then follows with thirteen carefully formulated reasons why 
the use of signs is important and even indispensable in the educa- 
tion of the deaf. 
Mr. Bell is in error when he supposes that in the so-called sign- 
schools verbal language is only imparted through the intervention 
of the sign-language. In many well-ordered schools of this class, 
language is taught without the use of signs, and in such schools 
the language of signs is kept in its proper position of subordination. 
It goes without saying that in schools for the deaf there may be an 
injudicious and excessive use of signs. This is always to be guarded 
against, and when it is, I am convinced that no harm, but great 
good, results from the use of signs in teaching the deaf. 
Furthermore, it is well known that the attempt to banish signs 
from a school for the deaf rarely succeeds. Miss Sarah Porter, for 
three years an instructor in the Clarke Institution at Northamp- 
ton, Mass., an oral school in which most excellent results have been 
attained, shows candor as well as judgment when she says, in a re- 
cent article in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, “ Every 
oral teacher knows that fighting signs is like fighting original sin. 
Put deaf children together and they will make signs secretly if not 
openly in their intercourse with each other.” 
It is not true as a matter of fact that the use of signs necessarily 
prevents the deaf from acquiring an idiomatic use of verbal lan- 
guage and from thinking in such language. Large numbers of 
them who have never been taught orally have come into sucha 
use of verbal language, and while it is granted that many edu- 
cated under the sign system do not use verbal language freely and 
correctly, the same is found to be true of very many who have 
been educated entirely in oral schools. 
In one important particular the language of signs performs a 
most valuable service for the deaf, and one of which nothing has 
yet been found to take the place. Through signs large numbers of 
deaf persons can be addressed, their minds and hearts being moved 
as those of hearing persons are by public speaking in its various 
forms. 
Having seen the good effects on the deaf of the discreet use of 
the sign-language through a period of many years, I am confident 
that its banishment from all schools for the deaf would work great 
injury to this class of persons intellectually, socially, and morally. 
