where the Annals can be printed well. Let it be done by one of these institutions, and let the Executive Committee instruct the office where it is done, in reference to the manner of doing it. MR. NOYES.-I would simply add one word upon the resolution. It is obviously simply advisory, and does not bind the committee. In my hand is a number of the Annals that was printed by the deaf and dumb: I have glanced it over. I have several magazines that were not printed by the deaf and dumb, and I have no hesitation in saying that I can produce some, the execution of which is inferior to this. I say this is creditable. I do not say it is all that I could wish; it has not the appearance of coming from the Cambridge press, but is creditable to the boys that did the work. I should prefer to see the Annals such as this is, to having it come from the Cambridge, or Oxford press, or any other press that the deaf and dumb have nothing to do with. MR. KEEP. Only a little while ago there was a great desire manifested that the Annals should be in the charge of teachers, but now the superintendent element rises here, and fills the whole space of the subject before the Convention. The superintendents want the Annals printed at their institutions-one wants it at one place, and another, at another. As a teacher, I protest against this. If I contribute to the Annals, I wish my productions printed in a decent form. And although Mr. Gillett did reprint one number of the Annals, yet I find that there are still mistakes that are, in my opinion, discreditable, and even disgraceful. Printing is a difficult art; it requires great care, long experience, and a cultivated taste. It is out of the question to expect mere boys to print the Annals in a creditable manner, and the credit that the deaf and dumb get from it, is just the credit that a baby gets by writing his name, his father holding and guiding his hand. Why should we want to go forth before the world with any such false pretenses? When the deaf and dumb pupils have learned the printing trade, let them go forth into the printing offices of the country and practice it there. MR. PALMER. I can show, in North Carolina, deaf and dumb printers who can do their work as well as anybody, and who get as high wages as anybody. MR. KEEP. But it is the boys of the institution who are going to print the Annals. MR. PALMER. So far as our institution is concerned, it will not be printed there any more. H. P. PEET. Before this question is decided, we should determine what is the authority, and what are the duties of the Executive Committee. This discussion seems to imply that there is a distrust of the Executive Committee-that they will not do their duty; and it has been asserted here, that if the Annals were not printed satisfactorily, the committee had a right to take it away from that office and give it to another. Have they any right to do that, when this Convention passes a resolution to do the printing at a particular office? It seems to me that it would be well to have the authority and the duties of the Executive Committee properly defined, and then leave the matter to them, if you have confidence in them, as I think you have, from the fact of their appointment. If you have confidence in that committee, why not leave it to them to decide where and how, and under what circumstances, the Annals shall be printed? G. O. FAY.-I wish to say a word for deaf and dumb printers. I have in the Ohio Institution, forty boys learning the art; they have worked at it only two hours a day, for two years; but I do not like to have them called "babies." For I have boys that will take matter, set it up, correct it, put it into the forms, print it themselves, and bring it to me properly folded for use. Are they babies? Boys have gone out of the institution, in vacation, and earned a dollar a day in printing offices, and publishers have tried to get them to stay and work for them, instead of coming back to the institution. Does that look as if they were failures? My foreman tells me, my boys do the work of the printing office as well as any other boys can do it; he superintends the work, just as the foreman in any printing office does, and he is responsible; he expects to help the boys. The Annals, if printed at one of our institutions, may not be just the work of the deaf and dumb exclusively, but it will be the work of the deaf and dumb revised by a competent printer; and we have one to superintend our work who is fifty years old, and has been in a printing office the greater part of his life. E. M. GALLAUDET.-We all know that the deaf and dumb may be printers, and good ones at that. There are some such in Washington, who can do work equal to the best. That is not now a thing to be proved to the country. The question is simply whether the red. He then writes, "This ribbon is red," explaining the sentence by signs. He repeats the question to several of the pupils, requiring them to spell the sentence with their fingers. Calling the attention of all the pupils, he repeats the question, and requires them to write the answer in concert. The next step is to have them throw the ribbons into a heap near them, and repeating the same questions as before, with the addition of one to the effect whether there is one or more than one ribbon, to teach them to write "These ribbons are red." He then puts one red ribbon at a distance from the class, and, ranging himself with them, points to the ribbon, and asks if that ribbon is near them. They will say, by signs, "No, it is far off." He will then spell with his fingers that ribbon. After he has repeated the same question as before, they will write "That ribbon is red." In the same manner, putting several red ribbons at a distance, he will teach them to write "Those ribbons are red." On using green ribbons, he will probably find them able to write "This ribbon is green." "These ribbons are green." "That ribbon is green." "Those ribbons are green." The negative form should now be introduced, the pupils writing, "This ribbon is not red;" "This ribbon is green." By multiplying examples, taking different nouns and different adjectives, he will be able to review in both numbers all the nouns they have previously learned, and also all the adjectives; and thus fix in the mind, for all time, these peculiar forms of expression. It would be well, as soon as possible, to put the questions he introduces for analysis, in language, instead of signs, e. g., "Is that pen long?" To which the answer will be: "No, sir; this pen is not long; it is short." "No, sir; these pens are not long; they are short." "No, sir; that pen is not long; it is short." "No, sir; those pens are not long; they are short," The demonstrative pronouns, from the relative positions of teacher and pupil, being opposite in question and answer. A PRACTICAL VIEW OF DEAF-MUTE INSTRUCTION. BY ISAAC LEWIS PEET, A. M. Since the Annals were re-established, in September, 1868, a number of articles have appeared from different pens, which, while lamenting alleged deficiencies in deaf-mutes, proposed to remedy them by a change in the order of presenting the difficulties of language from that adopted in the course of instruction which was introduced by Dr. Peet in the year 1844, and which has been adopted in the great majority of institutions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb in this country. Some of these writers advocate a radically different system; and others, what is practically no system at all, so much does it involve hap-hazard in its order and details. One writer, indeed, goes so far as to say the teachers of the present day are not to be compared, as to the results they obtain, with those of a former period; and inquires if it is not probably owing, in great measure, to the fact that those to whom he awards this distinction had no instruction." course of Granting the assumption, the deduction is by no means established. No man can really accomplish so much, who sets out and continues an experimentalist, as one who, having certain principles, rules, and plans of procedure established, sees with his mind's eye his perfected work accomplished before he applies the first stroke to the purpose he has in view. What would be thought of a man who, beginning to build a house, dug his cellar, procured his materials as he wanted them, hired one or more men as he could get them, erected his frame, divided up his rooms, made modifications as he went on, constructed additions to supply deficiencies, and finally presented as the result of his efforts a piece of patchwork, which indicated the ever-veering ideas that experience suggested to his mind? How different this from the conduct of the true architect, who, bearing in mind the purpose for which the structure is to be erected, anticipates in his plan every want, fixes in feet and inches the size of every apartment, decides upon the quantity and strength of material, and pictures an elevation covering the whole, which shall symbolically represent to the eye the idea which the building, in its composite parts, is to embody in the uses to which it is to be applied; added to which the cost of the whole is estimated beforehand, and the result in dollars and cents is settled in advance. Of him, as of the other, it can not be said "He began to build, but was not able to finish." The assumption, however, can not be true. With so many earnest laborers in the field, the teachers who now occupy the places of those who have gone before must accomplish more than could have been accomplished when the whole work was terra incognita. In the infancy of any art or science, every man must, to a certain extent, learn as he proceeds, and in default of teacher to himself must profit by many failures, and, after a lifetime of only comparative success, content himself with leaving as a legacy to his successors principles which he has established, whereby they, though perhaps greatly his inferiors in talent, shall yet surpass him in what he actually accomplishes. The dwarf, standing on the shoulders of the giant, may grasp the fruit hanging above the reach of the great figure that supports him. The author of the Baconian philosophy gave instruments into the hands of other men for making discoveries of which he never dreamed. The inventor of the steam-engine offered to the world crude and ill-working machinery-far different from that of which an eloquent essayist has said: "The trunk of an elephant that can pick up a needle and rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal; draw out without breaking a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift up a shipof-war, like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors; cut steel into ribbons, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and waves." The man who rescued woman from the bondage of the needle contributed nothing but a little bit of steel, peculiarly perforated, to the wonderful piece of mechanism which, in this day, shows itself in the perfected sewing |