pupils are well, but some are sick." This is English pretty badly
broken.

These letters serve to illustrate a remark which Principal Peet of the
New York institution made to me not long ago: "The great difficulty in
instructing deaf mutes is in teaching them the English language."
In this, of course, he had reference to the deaf mutes of our own
country, and his statement appears, on its face, paradoxical. That
American children should learn at least to read the English language,
even when they cannot speak it, seems quite a matter of course. The
fact is, however, different. The first disadvantage under which the
deaf mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have
been developed. This deficiency is attributable to two causes--his
deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the
sense of hearing, and his want of language. Before an infant, one
possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding
of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas. No clear,
distinct conception is shaped in its mind. "Ideas," says M. Marcel in
his essay on the _Study of Languages_, "are not innate: they must be
received before they can be communicated. This is so true that native
curiosity impels us to listen long before we can speak.... Impression
... must therefore precede expression." Real thought, therefore,
it will be seen, grows with the child's acquisition of language--an
acquisition which is obtained in the earlier years entirely through
the organ of hearing. This principal avenue to the mind is closed
to the deaf mute. It is evident, therefore, that, lacking these two
fundamental sources of all knowledge, his mental growth is incredibly
slower than that of the hearing child. All that can be learned by
means of the other senses is, however, learned rapidly, these being
quickened and stimulated by the absence of one. Hence, the deaf-mute
child of eight or ten years of age often appears as bright and
intelligent as his more favored playmate. The latter, however, has a
store of knowledge and a fund of thought wholly unknown to the deaf
mute.

But it is the want of written language, and the obstacles in the way
of its acquirement, which constitute the chief disability of the deaf
mute in the attempt to gain an education. If you set a child of seven
years of age to learn Greek, requiring him to receive and express his
ideas wholly in that language, you would not hope fo