The Argosy — page 293: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

274 The Sunny Side of the Wall. both, that all knowledge can be communicated to them waé voce just as it would be to hearing children. In the greater number of the many schools for the education of the deaf throughout Europe (Great Britain being, alas! a notable exception) this system has entirely superseded that of signs. And speaking to the parents or friends of a child who becomes deaf, I would say most earnestly: Let them begin at once to learn lip- reading, and from the first discourage in them, and forbid in all who have to do with them, the use of signs, and of the finger alphabet which will seriously reiard their progress in learning to converse orally. Thus, if it be God’s will to build up a life-long wall of silence between them and the external world they may at least live on the sunny side of the wall, where their quick eyes may be trained to do duty for their dead ears. Miss Hull is one of those who have given their whole life and energy to this great work of teaching the dumb to speak and the deaf, if not to hear, to see. After years devoted to patient study in order to discover the best means of carrying out her object, she now says she “rests with perfect satisfaction in the working of this system, which can completely restore all the powers of knowledge through spoken language to the deaf, /ztera/ly as to the hearing.” All honour to such noble workers, and their work! It is in the hope of taking some small share in helping to make it known that I write this paper. There are yet many, even amongst those who honestly desire to benefit their fellow creatures, who are prejudiced against this system, and oppose it, because they have not proved it for themselves. By this means they put a stumbling block in the way of the deaf, now that the efforts of these thoughtful and large-hearted men and women have discovered how their powers of speech can be drawn out, and awaken in them the ‘‘soul music,” which otherwise must for ever have remained mute. I will ask to be allowed to quote here two cases which have lately been told me by a member of the committee of the Ealing Training College. They will help to prove that the deaf Auve been by these means so educated as to enable them to play their parts in the ranks of the work-a-day world. A young man, engaged to be married, and who had _ been rendered totally deaf from a heavy fall from his horse, took lessons in lip- reading from Mr. Kinsey, the principal of the Training College, and became so proficient that he is now continuing his business as before the accident. His sister, who was absent in India at the time, and had not therefore seen her brother since his affliction, remarked on her return that she found so little difference in him that she could scarcely realise his deafness, and was only reminded of it now and then, when during a conversation with him she turned aside, forgetting he must see to understand. A deaf gentleman in America having perfectly acquired the art of COMICIOOKS COL