Training College for Teachers of the Deaf.
"GERMAN" SYSTEM,
As President of the above Society, allow me to press on your attention the following facts. I am informed by the Honorary Secretary that at present only about one-half are being educated at all, and scarce a hundred receive the benefits of the "German" System, by which the Dumb are taught to speak.
The accompanying papers will more fully describe this valuable system.
Funds are urgently needed for its further development amongst us.
A LIVING DEATH.
"Will you picture to yourself a scene near a life's commencement—such, as yours or mine—of a mother and her baby? Its tiny fingers wrestle with her hair; its sparkling eyes and dimpled cheeks, its crowings and croonings, are her heart's delight: they play together, laugh together, yes, talk together in baby language all day long; what companions will they not be, these two, a little later; every day growing dearer, in a love strong as death.
So God meant it to be; so it shall be, speaking roughly, in fifteen hundred cases as against one; and that one I think of it. No less happy is this mother with her child; the child with her. But after a time someone suggests a question: "Why doesn't baby begin to talk?" "Oh, it's too young yet." "But mine," says the visitor, "talks quite plainly, though it is a month younger." "Well, it will come in time: better be backward!" But nothing comes—only to the happy mother a slow awakening and a bitter cry.—"Oh, nurse; so backward as this? Better never born! Better dead!"
God help those two. God give them grace to bear up against the ever sundering years; because the tender, wooing voice of the mother shall be unknown to the child; the longed for and expected accents of the child shall be denied the poor mother. That early teaching at the knee of love, obedience, faith is God and man, it may not be for her to instil into the little heart. What wonder, if soon the baby daughter dies away, the dimpling smiles grow rare and disappear; the lonely life shrinks inward into death—a living death!
Take another case. A child of tender years has been stricken down by malignant fever. After weeks of anxious prayer and watching the glimmering of reason is perceived again. The dear child's voice, so long disguised in delirium, has found itself once more, and talks of childish things; the blue eyes are open, themselves again. Over him the mother bends with grateful heart; she kisses the precious lips, and murmurs words of love. But, hush! Why are the corners working of the little mouth? What, the while, is that piteous little voice saying? "Mother, darling, do speak to me; do sing to me." "Yes, my boy; what shall I sing?" "Mother, why don't you answer? Why do your lips move, and I can't hear? O mother, mother, why is it all so quiet?"
Do you who read pity that burst of mother's anguish, and that child's still wonderment, which reveal the truth —Deaf; soon to be Dumb! It is the old story again, but for help from without; gradually, while the mother watches and weeps, that little voice fades away like a dying echo, until the childish prattle is hushed as in the grave: and in this sorrowful world of ours there is one more heart vacant, and one more life sad. God's will be done.
Only, let us be quite sure what God's will is. His will—if He reveals it through the working of the mind He gave us, and we are sure He does,—His will is, that these dear children of His and ours, whether they be born deaf or rendered so by sickness, should not for that reason be estranged from their fellow men.
They are Deaf, indeed, but we may teach them to read our moving lips, and thus reach, undistorted, our spoken thoughts.
And, except through lack of culture, they are not Dumb, for they may be trained, in the one case to make use of, in the other not to lose the power of speech, which mere deafness does not destroy: both may acquire our spoken language, and may join therefore in our thoughts and pursuits, and share, through God's goodness, in our pleasures.
It is not for me here to compare the rival systems of education;—to plead as I would gladly do, for voice and language, as against silentness and signs, and isolation in the outer world. Thank God and good workers for all teaching, and speed the best. Help is urgently needed. Because, in Great Britain, scarcely more than half the "Deaf" and "Deaf and Dumb" are educated at all!
You, then, who are happy, healthy, prosperous, in whatever degree, you who hear earth's music and its pleasant voices, let your Willingness go forth, in this cause, to meet the Will of God.
If He has spared you these or such like trials, make that immunity the spur to prick the sides of your intent, and thank Him, not wordily I Do something; your best; after the example of that Great One, who made the Deaf to hear and the Dumb to speak,—took the little ones in His arms and blessed them,—and caused the mother's heart to sing for joy,