The Dumb Taught to Speak.
ONE who has visited Whipple's Home School for Deaf Mutes located on the Mystic River, Conn., the first school in this country at which deaf mutes were taught to speak, makes the following interesting remarks in the Christian Union, concerning his visit: “Conversing with those scholars who have enjoyed Mr. Whipple's mode of instruction for some time, one would not suspect that they ever labored under any defect of hearing. The pleasure which the scholars take in being thus able to talk with others is very great. It seems to them like breaking out into a new life. The late Jonathan Whipple, grandfather of the present principal, taught his own deaf son to speak orally, and to converse; this was the first successful experiment of the kind known in this country, and out of it has sprung the present institution. The wonderful art of teaching the dumb to speak consists in training the pupil to observe and imitate the motions of the lips and other organs of speech of the person speaking to him. Mr. Whipple has also invented a hieroglyphic alphabet, showing the position of the mouth, in articulating each of the elementary sounds. A reproduction of the position by the pupil with his own mouth accompanied with voice, produces the word. The advancement of the scholar, by means of this training, is more rapid and his articulation more perfect than one would think possible. I doubt not that a deaf mute may thus be taught to address an audience in such a manner as scarcely to awaken the suspicion that he was ever a mute though still entirely destitute of hearing.”