GENERAL MEETING. 83 
Mr. Hubbard in the meantime, with the aid of Miss Rogers, had 
opened a small school where the deaf were taught to speak. This 
school was visited and examined by the committee, and the progress 
made was so great that Mr. Dudley became a warm convert, con- 
vinced that the impossible was possible, and the application was 
granted, although again opposed by the gentlemen from Hartford. 
The school was opened at Northampton, and has been in operation 
for nearly fifteen years, and teaching by articulation has ceased to 
be a visionary theory. 
Many of the warmest friends of the Institution now are, like Mr. 
Gallaudet, connected with institutions where signs are used. In 
almost every institution for the deaf classes are now taught to articu- 
late, though articulation is not used as the instrument for instruc- 
tion. 
Mr. Gallaudet had taken exception to the remark of Mr. Bell, that 
idiots were born dumb, and said that in every school for idiots there 
were many feeble-minded children who could talk readily ; but Mr. 
Bell used the word idiot not as simply a feeble-minded person, but 
according to its ordinary meaning, “a human being destitute of 
reason or the ordinary intellectual powers of man.” 
It has always been the policy at Northampton to prevent, as far 
as possible, marriages of deaf with deaf, for the records show that 
the children of such intermarriages are often deaf; and even where 
a congenitally deaf person marries a hearing person, the children 
sometimes are deaf. 
The tendency of the intermarriage of the deaf would be to raise 
a deaf race in our midst. 
About one in 1,500 of the population are deaf; but if these in- 
termarriages should take place and a deaf race be created, the propor- 
tion would rapidly increase. The object of all friends of the deaf 
should be to prevent the deaf from congregating, and to induce 
them to associate with hearing people. In bringing the deaf to- 
gether in institutions, where they are taught by signs, the tendency 
is to make the deaf deafer and the dumb more dumb. 
It was originally intended to have only a family or small school 
at Northampton, but it was soon found that signs could not be ex- 
cluded from the play-ground, as the young children could not com- 
municate in any other way. The plan was changed, the number of 
pupils was largely increased, and a preparatory department estab- 
lished, in which signs were tolerated on the play-ground. On 
