Europe and America studying the French and German systems, and came to the conclusion that the latter offered greater chances of reducing the disabilities of deafness to a minimum. In addresses, which both delivered before the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf at Milan in 1880, they gave some instances of what had been found possible under the German system. Whilst Mrs. Ackers knew cases where as many as three foreign languages had been acquired by oral pupils, Mr. Ackers told several instructive anecdotes. In their visits to deaf people they never met anyone who could have been mistaken for a hearing person, he admitted; but they heard the congenitally deaf speak, and were understood by them. One apprentice they saw stuttered, but spoke intelligibly, nevertheless. Indeed, his master said he spoke a great deal too much, and was always talking with his fellow apprentice. Mr. and Mrs. Ackers interviewed a thriving deaf dressmaker, who, however, proved shy, and was with difficulty induced to say anything about herself. She was engaged to be married, and her lover, hearing she had made so poor an exhibition of her powers of talking, rated her roundly on it and Mr. and Mrs. Ackers were treated to the edifying spectacle of a spirited altercation between the deal girl and her sweetheart. Another case referred to a congenitally deaf working tailor, who was at the court-house when they called. There had been a theft from his master's shop, and he was the chief witness. He gave his evidence by word of mouth, lip read the advocates who examined and cross-examined him, and his testimony resulted in the conviction of the prisoner. Mrs. Kinsey herself told me a remarkable story. A country doctor who did not believe in the oral system, at a dance or an evening party, was talking to a young lady whom he had not met before. He said he had been informed there was a deaf lad in the room who had been educated on the oral system, and he would like to test the lad's ability to speak, and to lip read. The young lady replied that she supposed he meant her brother, who was deaf from birth, but spoke perfectly.
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"That is my brother," she said, indicating a youth standing some distance away.
"Oh, nonsense!" cried the doctor, "I have just been talking to him, and he hears as well as I do."
"He is deaf as a post," answered the young lady, "and has not heard a word you said."
It that did not convince the doctor of the merits of the oral method nothing would. He, however, is not the only person who has been deceived, momentarily, at any rate, by the deaf who have acquired speech. In the Mayor's office of a great Midland town, I am told, one of the clerks, who has been deaf from infancy, holds his own without inconvenience to himself or anyone else.
So far we have been considering the education of the deaf and dumb from the brightest and most favourable point of view.
