he might have continued to look in vain. He was dumb. He had never spoken; his hearing was good, and all the vocal organs perfect. At the age of five, he was sent to a school for the deaf; but after some years the teacher sent him away, declaring that his hearing was very good, but that, seeing he would never utter one word, he was probably an idiot.
The boy then found himself in a class for the feeble-minded. He soon became a source of great joy and profit to his poor comrades, for he had just the kind of gifts that could make it possible for him to stimulate and interest them. So though he could not be a pupil teacher, he was something very much better. Armed with a piece of chalk, he would stand before the blackboard, and draw donkeys with panniers, horsemen riding upon horses, dogs begging for crusts, and cats, with handsome tails, chasing mice in a barn. The children stood round and looked at him with an attention which even skilled teachers could not perhaps have roused in them, and sometimes the head teacher came to watch the drawing, and even Her Majesty's inspector was known to join the group.
Not Froebel or Herbart, if they had risen from the dead, could have delivered him. The deliverer was at hand in the person of the school doctor.
