Page:Vocal Speech for the Dumb.djvu/23

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DEAF, NOT DUMB.
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as this: 'Man horse black on riding was,' and, if he did not use his authority to stop this, the children must be expelled. He at once wrote, explaining that they had been in the habit of communicating chiefly with their deaf and dumb mother, who employed signs, and this inverted language was the consequence. If no notice were taken, but the children allowed to mix freely with their schoolfellows, he had no doubt their language would right itself, and so the event proved.

We now come to the last of the three classes of the so-called 'deaf and dumb'—the toto-congenital. How these educated on the 'German' system were able, after leaving school, to get on in the world by articulation and lip-reading, was, you may remember, the great object of our inquiries. This point is all the more important now, as the advocates of the 'French' system allow, in theory, however little they carry it out in practice, the value of teaching articulation to most of the semi-mute and semi-deaf, but still deny the use of attempting it with toto-congenitals except in very rare instances.

Now as to those who have left the 'German' system schools. We saw specimens of these, some in workshops, some milliners, some married to hearing persons, some at home with their parents, some master tradesmen, &c., all, I again remark, were toto-congenital—such as would be termed in America, France, and England, 'deaf and dumb.' The result was encouraging beyond anything we had dared to hope. Had we expected to find old pupils that 'one would not have known from hearing persons' we should have been disappointed. There may be such, but we have never been able to trace any, nor