THE GESTUEE-LANGUAGE. 33 



bered ttat I can only write down tlie skeletons of them. To 

 see them is something very different, for these dry bones have 

 to be covered with flesh. Not the face only, but the whole 

 body joins in giving expression to the sign. Nor are the sober, 

 restrained looks and gestures to which we are accustomed in 

 our daily life sufficient for this. He who talks to the deaf-and- 

 dumb in their own language, must throw off" the rigid covering 

 that the Englishman wears over his face like a tragic mask, 

 that never changes its expression while love and hate, joy and 

 sorrow, come out from behind it. 



Religious service is performed in signs in many deaf-and- 

 dumb schools. In the Berlin Institution, the simple Lutheran 

 service, a prayer, the gospel for the day, and a sermon, is acted 

 every Sunday morning in the gesture-language for the children 

 in the school and the deaf-and-dumb inhabitants of the city, 

 and it is a very remarkable sight. No one could see the 

 parable of the man who left the ninety and nine sheep in the 

 wilderness, and went after that which was lost, or of the wo- 

 man who lost the one piece of silver, performed in expressive 

 pantomime by a master in the art, without acknowledging that 

 for telling a simple story and making simple cormnents on it, 

 spoken language stands far behind acting. The spoken narra- 

 tive must lose the sudden anxiety of the shepherd when he 

 counts his flock and finds a sheep wanting, his hurried penning 

 up the rest, his running up hill and down dale, and spying 

 backwards and forwards, his face lightiug up when he catches 

 sight of the missing sheep in the distance, his carrying it home 

 in his arms, hugging it as he goes. We hear these stories 

 read as though they were lists of generations of antediluvian 

 patriarchs. The deaf-and-dumb pantomime calls to mind the 

 "action, action, action!" of Demosthenes, 



