amusingly inappropriate. A deaf-and-dumb
institution is the noisiest place in the world.

In summing up the results usually attained, let no discontented
taxpayer grumble at the large outlays annually made in behalf of the
deaf and dumb. If they learned absolutely nothing in the school-room,
the intelligence they gain by contact with each other, by the lectures
in signs, by intercourse with teachers, and the regular and systematic
physical habits acquired, are of untold value. Add to this a tolerable
acquaintance with the common English branches, such as reading,
writing, arithmetic--one of their most useful acquirements--geography
and history, and we have an amount of education which is of
incalculable value.

JENNIE EGGLESTON ZIMMERMAN.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CITY OF VIOLETS.

Wartburg, with its pleasant memories of delightful excursions during
the previous summer, was covered with snow, as if buried in slumber,
when I dashed past it on the 25th of March. A gray mantle of mist
obscured the sky, and by all the roadsides stood bushes loaded with
green buds shivering in the frosty air. The exquisite landscape, which
I had last seen glowing with such brilliant hues, now appeared robed
in one monotonous tint of gray, and the ancient towers and pointed
roofs of Weimar loomed with a melancholy aspect through the dense
fog. Only the welcome of my faithful friends, Gerhard Rohlfs and
his pretty, fair-haired wife, was blithe and gay. The brave desert
wanderer and bird of passage has now built himself a little wigwam or
nest near the railway-station: the grand duke of Weimar gave him for
the purpose a charming piece of ground with a delightful view. On the
25th of March a light veil of snow still rested on the ground, but two
days later we were listening to the notes of the lark and gathering
violets to take to Schiller's house and adorn the table of the beloved
singer. Everything was illumined by the brilliant sunlight--the
narrow bedstead on which he died, and all the numerous withered
laurel-wreaths and bouquets of flowers that filled it--while outside,
in Schiller's little garden, in the bed where his bust is placed,
violets nodded at us between the leaves of the luxuriant ivy.

And we carried in our hands bouquets of violets when we stood before
Goethe's house to pay our respects to the lady who in these bustling
days remains a revered memento of the times of Carl Augustus and his
poet-friend--Ottilie von