'Signs.' All, except
'Natural Signs.' Which I define as such as hearing persons use and can understand; e.g. 'come,' beckoning with the hand; 'go,' motioning away with the hand; which are really actions, not signs.
You may wonder why we did not test for ourselves the results obtained by the various methods in this country. We would willingly have done so, but the 'German' system had not been long enough at work to prove the value of its teaching to pupils in general after leaving school, and we were assured by the 'French' system teachers—the 'old' system, as it is so often erroneously called by Englishmen, simply because in this country it has been the longer established—that, however good the 'German' might appear in school, the speech and lip-reading; there learnt were of no value in after life.
We could not disprove this assertion. Nay, we were inclined to believe it, for, we said to ourselves, as so many do now, 'If it be the better method, surely it would have been adopted by such a practical nation as our own long ago.' Of this I must speak hereafter.
It will be seen that, to persons considering this subject for the first time, as we were, it was impossible to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion—one that would leave no doubt on their minds—without going into the world to find out the truth. So, without loss of time, in August, 1872, our child being three years old, we left her with my wife's family, and commenced investigation for ourselves. We visited some of the principal schools in each of the following countries, in the order named:—England, United States, Canada, Great Britain, Holland, Belgium,
