all have, before long, to leave what has to them become a happy home, where everyone understands and uses the language of signs, and to take their place in the world, and earn their daily bread. Here they scarcely ever meet with anyone able to use the language of signs, and very, very few who know the finger alphabet. But it may be said, 'They have wriiting.' Yes, but what does this amount to?
However much knowledge or education may be justly claimed for the deaf-mute instructed upon the 'French' system of signs, still such knowledge is to hearing persons in a great measure a sealed book, by reason of the want of a proper communication between the two classes; the deaf-mute, in consequence of the peculiar nature of his instruction, which gives him language in an inverted order, has a difficulty in making himself understood by writing, and in comprehending the writing of ordinary hearing persons. His own knowledge of language is very imperfect, and few of those with whom he daily associates are sufficiently educated to read or write with comfort, and many, we know, cannot do so at all.
Now let us pass to the 'Combined' method. This is the system that Gallaudet, the first teacher of the deaf in America, found in this country, and erroneously supposed to be the 'German' method. He took this for granted, because articulation was taught. He failed to appreciate, as so many do now, the cardinal difference of these systems. It is this, that under the 'Combined' method, a system of signs is the basis of instruction, articulation being only an accomplishment, just as modern languages were taught in our old public schools, with the result we
