24 THE GESTURE-LANGUAGE. 



which they are used. These are signs which indicate an object 

 by some accidental peculiarity, and are rather epithets than 

 names. My deaf-and-dumb teacher, for instance, was named 

 among the childi^en by the action of cutting off the left arm 

 with the edge of the right hand ; the reason of this sign was, 

 not that there was anything peculiar about his arms, but that 

 he came from Spandau, and it so happened that one of the 

 children had been at Spandau^ and had seen there a man with 

 one arm ; thence this epithet of " one-armed " came to be ap- 

 plied to all SpandauerSj and to this one in particular. Again, 

 the Royal residence of Charlottenburg was named by taking up 

 one's left knee and nursing it^ in allusion apparently to the 

 late king having been laid up with the gout there. 



In like manner, the children preferred to indicate foreign 

 countries by some characteristic epithet, to spelling out their 

 names on their fingers. Thus England and Englishmen were 

 aptly alluded to by the action of rowing a boat, while the signs 

 of chopping off a head and strangling were used to describe 

 France and Russia, in allusion to the deaths of Louis XVI. 

 and the Emperor Paul, events which seem to have struck the 

 deaf-and-dumb children as the most remarkable in the history 

 of the two countries^ These signs are of much higher interest 

 than the grammatical symbols, which can only be kept in use, 

 so to speak, by main force, but these, too, never penetrate into 

 the general body of the language, and are not even permanent 

 in the place where they arise. They die out from one set of 

 children to another, and new ones come up in their stead. 



The gesture-language has no grammar, properly so called; 

 it knows no inflections of any kind, any more than the Chinese. 

 The same sign stands for " walk," '' walkest," " walking," 

 " walked," " walker." Adjectives and verbs are not easily 

 distinguished by the deaf-and-dumb ; " horse-black-handsome- 

 trot-canter," would be the rough translation of the signs by 

 which a deaf-mute would state that a black handsome horse 

 trots and canters. Indeed, our elaborate systems of " parts of 

 speech " are but little applicable to the gesture-language, 

 though, as will be more fully said in another chapter, it may 

 perhaps be possible to trace in spoken language a Dualism, in 



