transposition in their own minds. In a great many cases the order of the words in our language is as much one way as it is the other. For instance, a pictured fan and a fan with pictures on it are the same thing; the idea is essentially the same, and there is no advantage, so far as habits of thought are concerned, to put it in the one order rather than in the other. To say a horse of a black color is as good English as to say a black horse, though the order of the ideas in the one expression is inverted in the other.

MR. WILLIAMS.-Dr. Gallaudet appears to misapprehend a remark that I made. What I intended to say was, not that the order of signs was a mechanical order, or that the order of the English language was a mechanical order, but that the translation of the signs, when they are given in the order of the English words, into language, is simply a mechanical process. And, as we all use these signs merely as a means of instruction, if we give them in the order of the English language, when the child produces them on the slate, we do not know, we can not know, whether the child has in its mind the idea expressed by the words or not. It is like a child studying Latin: the instructor reads off to the child a Latin sentence and asks him to reproduce it in writing; he does it; yet perhaps he does not understand one word of what is there. It is merely a mechanical process. And this is the idea I meant to convey in regard to the signs, when given in he order of the words in the English language.

MR. BULL.-Whether the deaf and dumb ought to be expected to master the English language or not, they come far enough short of it, to justify us in keeping up this discussion upon what are the best methods of teaching them language. I was much interested in the paper that was read this morning on the subject of "Language," and I agree with it fully so far as it goes. I agree with the remarks on the importance of practice and repetition. I regard them as very essential to the acquisition of language. But, at the same time, I think there is a good deal to be said for theory. It is quite important to know just where to begin to teach language, and in what order to teach it. When I first began to teach the deaf and dumb, after the pupils had learned some little of language, I began, as it were, to be out at sea, hardly knowing what principles of language to teach next. All language is made up of propositions; and there is a natural order of propositions, and we can find out that order, and thus present language to our pupils in an orderly

MR. PORTER.-The objection is often made, as was done in the article before us, to the natural language of signs and the proper order of that language, that there are no rules for the order which it is claimed the language requires. It is not true that there are no such rules, although it is true that the same idea can be expressed by signs in various ways and in a varied order, just as the same idea can, in words, be expressed in different ways and with variations of order. The main rule, probably, is this: that you must follow the order of pictorial representation; the order by which you can most successfully represent to the imagination what it is that you wish to describe. That, of course, need not always confine us to a single invariable order. Take this sentence as an illustration: "An old man found a rude boy on one of his trees stealing apples." You may begin by picturing first the old man, then the old man finding something, and then indicate that it is a boy, and then you represent the boy as on an apple tree; or, rather, to complete the picture, you represent an orchard, or a number of trees, and then show that on one of them there is a boy, and so on. In that way you get the whole thing into the mind of the person addressed. Or, on the other hand, you may begin with the trees, and say nothing at first about the man; here is an orchard of trees, and apples on them; then you represent the boy coming along and climbing one of the trees; or you may picture him as already on one of the trees; then you represent the old man as coming along and discovering the boy. Thus we have liberty of variation, though restricted to the order which pictorial representation requires. But I would ask the author of the paper whether he thinks he could get that idea into the mind of a deaf-mute by taking the signs in the order of the words of the English language? When you come to still more complicated language, utter confusion would be produced and no idea at all would be communicated, while by understanding the genius of the sign language and representing the idea as it would naturally be expressed by a deaf-mute, or, in other words, in the natural order of the signs, a picture is produced before the mind's eye conveying the entire idea just as it is intended.

Reference is often made to the Latin language as having a different order from that of the English tongue; but the Latin has no such invariable order. The Latin adjective, for instance, is not seldom placed before the noun. The truth is simply this, that, in

ment of respect and admiration for the man who is willing to tear down even the structure that his father erected, if he thinks there is a promise of building up a better. I have a great respect for all that is old, when it is the best for its purpose that can be obtained, but when something better can be had, it is our duty to stand for and receive it with open arms. I think if our friend here (Dr. Gallaudet) has made any mistake, it is not in admitting that we have not the best, but in asserting that another system, which is yet only in its incipiency in this country, is not the best. That is a question that time and experience must determine; we are now engaged in the solution of that problem, and it is yet too soon to decide the matter one way or the other. But I stand by my friend (Dr. E. M. Gallaudet) in his desire for progress and improvement in the art of instruction, and say, let us hold on to all that we have, and improve upon it as fast as we are able: "Proving all things, holding fast to that which is good."

H. P. PEET.—It is one thing to boast in putting on the harness, and another in taking it off. President Gallaudet has not shown results here, and results are to be determined by experiment and not by theory. I certainly desire as great an improvement in the method of teaching the deaf and dumb as any member of this Convention, but I certainly do not wish to hear the instrument, that we have employed hitherto in accomplishing what has been done, called a "pernicious" thing. There is no doubt that signs, after verbal language has once been acquired, may be used too much ; the manual alphabet, writing, or, if you please, vocal speech should be employed, but, to say that signs are a nuisance, seems to me to be carrying the thing entirely too far.

P. G. GILLETT.-I do not wish to be understood as confirming here the remark made by Mr. Brown in the Convention, to which allusion was made. My position is, that we have not, in the matter of instructing the deaf and dumb, reached results that are wholly satisfactory, and I understand that Dr. E. M. Gallaudet is seeking for something better than what we now have. In that I join with him heartily.

E. M. GALLAUDET.-Dr. Peet asks me for "results." The primary department of the college at Washington is a very small school; its members are not counted by the hundreds, but by the score. We can not point, therefore, to so many bright pupils who have gone out from our college as you can, but I am happy to say

plainly in this convention, and which we have all to look in the face, that the deaf and dumb, as a class, do not master the English language. I take it, that is the confession of the discussion and of the article that the deaf and dumb in our institutions, as a class, do not master the English language. I consider this a very serious confession. I do not know that I can say when I first became aware of that great fact, though I can look back to a time when I was not aware of it, in my experience as a teacher of the deaf and dumb. But it is a fact of which I am fully satisfied; and I find it pretty well confessed here to-day. Other evidences of this fact have also come to my knowledge. To the college at Washington have come students from various parts of the country, representing a large number of the institutions. Those pupils have come to us for the purpose of extending their education; of going into the study of various branches of learning not taught them elsewhere. We, of course, have to examine them, in order to learn what have been their previous attainments; to learn how far they have mastered that language, which, in the college at Washington, is made the basis of communication and instruction; I mean, not the sign language, but the English language. In the working of our college, we find young men of fine minds, who have had the best advantages that the country can afford, in institutions second to none, who doubtless have had faithful teachers, and have been earnest and persevering themselves, and have a great ambition to be scholars-we find such young men not by any means masters of the English language. In saying this, I mean, not masters of the English language in its comparatively simpler forms-not, of course, the elementary forms, but the simpler forms of expression. In some of the middle classes of the college, we have young men whose minds are well stored with facts, who have a good knowledge of mathematics and the natural sciences, who, perhaps, know something of French and a good deal of Latin, and who yet are not masters of the English language, as we feel, and as every one of you would admit if placed in communication with them, they ought to be. This seems to me a serious fact, and it leads me to inquire, why and how has this come about? In our college course we can not say to these young men, because you can not write the English language absolutely correctly, you must go back into the preparatory department and study there five or six years before you can go through college. They are young

men who are well able to appreciate and profit by a college course; they can, with the aid of text-books and the instruction of their professors, obtain a fair understanding of the studies of the course. They, however, show (and it is one of the sources of difficulty that we find there) that they are not masters of the English language, because they can not take up the text-books and use them with facility-text-books, too, that we should call rather simple, on the whole-and show that they get hold of all the ideas designed to be conveyed by the authors.

In the paper of this morning, in the paper of this afternoon, and in the discussion, we have had several views; but I take it, that it is all to this point-that the deaf and dumb do not, under our present system of instruction, master the English language. This is attempted to be accounted for in various ways. I have spent many hours in serious reflection, inquiring, why is this so? All of us have thought of it, and I am not sure but the minds of those who are yet young in the profession may bring to us ideas that would not be reached by those who have been jogging along in the harness for a long time. And, for my part, I desire to thank the gentleman who has read the paper for the pains he has taken. While I am not prepared to agree with all the points in it, I am anxious to sustain the gentleman from Louisiana when he says that the use of the sign language, in an order which should far more nearly correspond with the order of the English language than that which is commonly used in our institutions, would be of immense advantage to the deaf and dumb. This is not a new idea to me. There are those with whom I was associated at Hartford twelve or fourteen years ago who may perhaps remember that I held these views at that time. I have held them through a period of fifteen years, and, in my own public sign-making in Washington or wherever I am, my aim is to present the thoughts that I have to give in the sign language, as nearly as they can conveniently be given in the order of thought in the English language. Mr. Talbot has said that the order of the sign language is the natural order of thought. You may take that up and look at it metaphysically, and show that it is, indeed, very hard to conceive of a black before the object is mentioned; but I claim that when our minds are in operation and thought is flowing, it flows in the order of the language with which we are most familiar. If I should go to Germany and associate with Germans every day for years, until