82 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
The Hon. Garpiner G. Hupsarp being present, was invited by 
the chair to participate in the discussion. He said he had been 
connected with the Clark Institution for many years. The deaf 
pupils in that school are taught entirely by articulation. 
From recent inquiries which had been made to ascertain how 
far the graduates had profited by instruction in articulation, it ap- 
peared that in almost in every instance they could carry on conver- 
sation with others sufficiently to engage in many kinds of business 
from which they would have been excluded if they had only used 
signs. 
It was true, as Mr. Gallaudet said, the congenitally deaf were fre- 
quenty able to articulate more distinctly than those who lost their 
hearing at an early age, but this arises from the fact that the dis- 
ease that caused the deafness affected the organs of articulation to 
a greater or less degree; but the congenitally deaf do not make as 
rapid progress in their studies as those who had once spoken, for 
these have a knowledge of language which the former could ob- 
tain only by long protracted study. 
Mr. Hubbard believed that the pupils at the Clark Institution 
made at least as rapid progress in all their studies as those taught 
by signs; while, at the same time, they acquired the power of read- 
ing from the lips and speaking, in which those taught by signs were 
deficient. 
When the first application was made to the Legislature of Mas- 
sachusetts for the incorporation of the Clark Institution, Mr. Dud- 
ley, of Northampton, chairman of the committee to whom the peti- 
tion was referred, had a congenitally deaf child under instruction 
at Hartford. The petitioners were opposed by the professors from 
the asylum, as they believed an articulating school would retard 
the education of the deaf, as it was impractical to teach the deaf 
by articulation, that system having been tried and proved a failure, 
and the new method was stigmatized as one of the visionary theories 
of Dr. Howe, (the principal of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, 
and the teacher of Laura Bridgeman, the blind deaf mute,) who 
was associated with the petitioners in the hearing. 
The application was rejected through the influence of these pro- 
fessors and of Mr. Dudley, who ‘ knew, from experience with his 
own child, that it was impossible to teach the congenitally deaf to 
talk.’ 
Two years after, our application was renewed and with better 
success. 
