48 GARDINER GREENE HUBBARD 



six or eight months we found six pupils, with whom we opened 

 • a school at Chelmsford, under the care of Miss Rogers." 



Miss Rogers began teaching her first pupil a few months after 

 the failure of the first attempt to establish a school. Mr Hub- 

 bard watched the work of this little school with most intense 

 interest, for from the first the full import of the experiment 

 seemed clear to his mind. If it was successful it meant speech 

 for the deaf and the English language through speech ; if it failed 

 it meant a deeper silence and a strange language of signs used 

 in place of the language of home and country. The success of 

 the school exceeded their expectations, and in 1867 an effort was 

 made to secure its incorporation. Mr Hubbard wrote: "Mr 

 Talbot and myself called on Governor Bullock and asked him in 

 his message to the legislature to refer to our school and favor an 

 application we intended to make for a charter for it. To our 

 great surprise, he told us that he had that morning received a 

 letter from a gentleman in Northampton offering $50,000 if a 

 school for the deaf could be established in Northampton." 



Governor Bullock did refer at considerable length to the offer 

 of Mr Clarke and recommended the establishment of a school for 

 the deaf in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That portion- 

 of his message was referred to a special committee of the Senate 

 and the House, of which the Honorable Lewis J. Dudley, of 

 Northampton, was chairman on the part of the House. Long, 

 earnest, and sharp were the debates held before the committee. 

 The advocates of the sign method still felt that a fearful mistake 

 was being made. The Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 

 of which the Honorable F. B. Sanborn was secretary, heartily 

 endorsed the movement toward the establishment of the new 

 school. Mr Dudley had become a convert to the oral method 

 and used his utmost influence to forward the movement. The 

 act of incorporation was secured, and Mr Clarke expressed his 

 purpose to give the school the bulk of his remaining property. 



The little experimental school of Miss Rogers was closed. Its 

 zealous and devoted teacher and her pupils became the nucleus 

 of the Clarke school in Northampton, which opened in October, 

 1867. Mr Hubbard was made president of its corporation and 

 for the first ten years of its existence gave the school much per- 

 sonal attention. 



Then followed years when he lived much abroad and when his 

 life was overcrowded with other interests; but wherever he was 

 and however busied with other matters, he always found time to 

 visit schools for the deaf and write of their methods and results. 



