that time there has transpired what, without violence
being done to language, can be called a revolution. A century ago the
deaf were practically outside the pale of human thought and activities.
They were in a measure believed to be without reason, and were little
less than outcasts in society. To-day they have become active
components of the state, possessed of education, on a level with their
fellow-men nearly everywhere in the scale of human employment, capable
of all the responsibilities of life, and standing in the full stature of
citizenship.

Perhaps the first workers for the deaf had not placed their faith too
high after all, when they declared that the deaf and dumb were to be
restored to the ranks of their species. Perhaps, after all, the visions
of these men have come true. Perhaps this that we call education has had
something of the power they were trying to articulate. For it has come
about that a part of society known as the deaf and dumb has been brought
to a place of honor and worth and usefulness in the community in which
they live.

However much of what was claimed has been achieved, it is certain that a
great part has been realized. It has been by a slow, silent process,
keeping time with the years, but none the less wonderful things have
been wrought; and through it all the advance of the deaf has been
constant and onward. It might be said with all truth that this whole
progress has been simply the march of events. Education has ever been
the master passion of Americans, and in its wide sweep the deaf too have
been gathered in, and have been borne to the place where all the state
had to offer as instruction was laid before them. Yet it remains that
by and through all this the deaf have been the gainers as no other
people in the world have ever been, and their story is as no other's in
the rise of a section of mankind towards the richness and fullness of
living which are the fruits of humanized society.

Great indeed can be the rejoicing of the deaf, for they are those to
whom the way has been hard and long, but who have come from the darkness
into the light.

Yet the victory of the deaf is not complete. They have not reached the
full position among men to which they are entitled. So long as people
look upon them as an unnatural portion of the race, view them with
suspicion or hold them as of peculiar temperament and habits, or
otherwise consider them distinct from the rest of their kind, and by