132 MY LIFE [Chap. 



is almost impossible, except to a very limited extent. 

 Others, on the contrary, learn with comparative rapidity, 

 just as some who can hear acquire foreign languages with 

 a rapidity which seems almost incredible to those without 

 the special faculty. Those who are familiar with the ges- 

 ture language, and can read and write with facility, seem to 

 enjoy their lives as well as we hearers and speakers enjoy 

 ourselves. They are seen walking together, laughing and 

 gesture-talking with each other, or engaged in the various 

 sports and occupations of their age without any indication 

 of the loss of the means of communication which seems to 

 us so essential. As now taught, the deaf-mute is in a far 

 less painful position than the blind ; indeed. Professor New- 

 comb told them, in an address he gave at the college in 

 1885, that they were peculiarly fortunate in being so situated 

 as to escape much of the idle, useless talk that is going on 

 in the world. His own time, he said, was largely taken up 

 by people who had nothing to say. Almost everything 

 worth knowing that has been said is now to be found in 

 print. 



While at Washington I was asked by two American 

 papers — The Nation and The Independent — to review a book 

 just published by Professor Cope, with the rather catching title, 

 " The Origin of the Fittest," made up by combining Darwin's 

 title, " The Origin of Species," and Herbert Spencer's, " The 

 Survival of the Fittest." With such a title from a man who, 

 owing to his extensive knowledge of anatomy and palaeon- 

 tology, was looked up to as a kind of American Haeckel, a 

 really important work might naturally be expected. But 

 this volume consisted almost entirely of a collection of lec- 

 tures, addresses, and magazine articles, printed just as they 

 were written or delivered, some in the first, some in the third 

 person, with whole pages of the same matter repeated in 

 different chapters, some of the illustrations having no refer- 

 ence in the text. In fact, a more egregious case of book- 

 making with a misleading title was never perpetrated. Of 

 course, there was good and original matter in it ; but all 



