, I think, is a
mistake and a poor consolation. Has the man who has never visited the
great Niagara cataract, but has many times heard and read of its wonders,
less desire to see it than one who has witnessed those grand displays of
God's power in the flood? Has the boy who loves to read of travels and
strange adventures less desire to see the glaciers of the Alps, the skies
of Italy or the jungles of Southern Africa, than the traveler who
described them? However well we may see with our mental vision, however
well suited to our taste may be our surroundings, however pleasant may be
our family relations, and however kind may be our companions, we cannot
help that irrepressible desire to know what there is about light and
color, about the indescribable beauty of a sunset, the splendor of an
evening sky, the glory of a cloudless day, and the awful grandeur of a
storm. There is yet one thing we greatly desire to know, which the fingers
cannot grasp.

We are told in poetry and romance that the human face divine is the index
of the spirit. That its ever changing lines express every mood of the mind
and every emotion of the soul, from a smile of ineffable beauty to a
midnight frown, from the sunshine of hope, and joy, and gladness, to
clouds of wrath and hatred. That the spirit looks out through the eye and
melts you with a beam of tenderness, or pierces your heart with a flash of
electric love, or charms you by revealing in its crystal depths the pearl
of purity, or transfixes you with a glance of displeasure. Is all this
talk about sunlit faces and starlit eyes, fine sentiment only, or does the
face really express feeling as unmistakably as we hear it in voices? To
show that the deaf have as great a desire to hear the music of the human
voice as we to see the language of the face, I quote from Dr. Kitto the
following touching passages of personal history:

"Is there anything on earth so engaging to a parent as to catch the first
lispings of his infant's tongue, or so interesting as to listen to its
dear prattle, and trace its gradual mastery of speech? If there be any one
thing arising out of my condition, which, more than another, fills my
heart with grief, it is _this_: it is to _see_ their blessed lips in
motion and to _hear_ them not, and to witness others moved to smiles and
kisses by the sweet peculiarities of infantile speech which are
incommunicable to me, and which pass by me like the idle wind."

Although there