er's language. It seems quite as rapid as talking.

We were present at the afternoon sermon, which lasted about half an
hour, the subject being that of Simeon in the Temple, and except to
express Simeon's name, there was no use at all made of the fingers. Dr.
Stone, the principal, had preached in the morning on the subject of
Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and when we went, the
children were being examined on the subject of this lecture. We _saw_ a
number of questions asked, but in this case the words were spelled in
order that Dr. Stone, who was teaching them, might be satisfied that
they understood the full meaning of the question in its grammatical
sense, as well as its general signification, and the answers were all
written down on large black boards. They wrote with prodigious rapidity
in large distinct writing--and the answers, which were all different and
showed they were not got up by rote, were in most cases very good. This
was being done by the eldest class, and some of the elder boys and girls
seemed full of intelligence. We saw minutely only what was going on in
this and in the youngest class, which was no less remarkable,
considering that some of the children had not been more than two or
three months in the Asylum, and when they came there had no idea of
either reading or writing.

When I say the youngest class, it is not with reference to the age of
the pupils, but to the recent period of their admission, for some of
them were as old in years as in the first class, while others were very
young; one of them, a very pretty little Jewish girl with sparkling
intelligent eyes, was indeed a mere child. We had on Sunday seen this
little girl being taught her lesson, which consisted of the simple
words, "I must be kind," and it was very pretty to see the way in which
the notion of kindness was conveyed by signs. This morning she was
writing this on the slate, and she afterwards wrote in a very neat
handwriting a number of short words--cat, dog, horse, &c.--which were
dictated to her by signs which were of so simple a nature that we could
understand many of them; a goat, for example, was represented by the
fingers being stuck on each side of the head as horns, and then by the
man drawing his hand down from his chin to indicate the beard. They thus
became acquainted by signs with almost every object in the first
instance, and are led on by degrees to complex ideas of every kind. Dr.
Stone says