station making any difference in the ease with which they understood each other.
But let us pass on to cases that came under our own notice. One, that of a poor woman living with an aunt, is worthy of special notice, showing as it does that the education given on the 'German' system is good, and not lost afterwards. She had left school some twelve years, and lived in a part of Germany where one of the many dialects prevailing in that country was spoken. Her aunt, a garrulous old woman, chattered at such a rate that my wife, though a good German scholar, was sometimes at fault, as was also the German lady who acted as my interpreter. More than once, when such was the case, my wife asked the deaf niece, whose purer German interpreted the sentence.
Another case was that of a young woman, who was a leading dressmaker in a small German capital. She was rather shy at first. On our mentioning this to the land-lord of the hotel where we were staying, he called the hotel porter, who was engaged to the deaf dressmaker, and told him we had not found his sweetheart very communicative. Whereupon the porter begged we would, escorted by himself, give her another trial. So off we started, but met the young woman soon after we left the hotel. The meeting of the two lovers was most amusing. He took her roundly to task for appearing to so little advantage on our first acquaintance, and, after some lively sparring—rattled off between them just as though both, instead of one only, had been hearing persons—we chimed in, and had a long and pleasant talk. She assured us that, in following her occupation,
