454 Gesture Language and Word Language. 



The outline of the shape of roof and walls drawn in the air 

 with two hands is a house ; with a flat roof it is a room. To 

 smell at a flower, and then with two hands make a horizontal 

 circle before one, is a garden. To pull up a pinch of flesh from 

 the back of one's hand is flesh or meat; make the steam curling 

 up from it with the fore-finger, and it becomes roast meat. 

 Make a bird's bill with two fingers in front of one's lips, and 

 flap the arms, and that means goose ; put the first sign and 

 these together, and we have roast goose." 



The gesture language has no inflections, and is so far like 

 the Chinese, but it has a system which Mr. Tylor explains. 

 He tells us that the deaf-mute arranges his words in a certain 

 order without reference to the spoken language custom of 

 the country to which he belongs. For black horse he says by 

 his signs horse black ; for bring a black hat, black hat bring ; 

 for I am hungry, give me bread, hungry me bread give. The 

 general rule is that a deaf-mute begins with that which he 

 thinks most important, ' c for instance, to say my father gave 

 me an apple, he makes first the sign for apple, then for father, 

 and lastly that for himself, dispensing with the verb." 



There is no difficulty in perceiving that a good many ideas 

 may be communicated by means of this gesture speech, but it 

 is astonishing to what perfection it has been carried. Mr. 

 Tylor cites from the Justice of the Peace for Oct. 1, 1864, a 

 remarkable will, of considerable complication, dictated by a 

 deaf-mute. He signified by gestures that he wished all his 

 property to go to his wife at his decease, and that if she 

 died during his daughter's lifetime, it was to pass to the 

 daughter, and in the event of her death, to her husband, if he 

 was the survivor ; and if both died, then to their children. To 

 make this last provision intelligible, he first repeated the signs 

 for his son-in-law and daughter, and made other signs to 

 signify their deaths. To indicate the children he placed his 

 right hand a short distance from the ground, and raised it by 

 degrees, and as if by steps, which were his usual signs for 

 pointing out their children, and then a sweeping motion ex- 

 pressed the wish that all should come in. 



Mr. Tylor informs us that, ' ' 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 lan- 

 guage 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 woman who lost the one piece of silver, performed 

 in expressive pantomime by a master in the art, without acknow- 

 ledging that, for telling a simple story, and making comments 



