The Gallaudet College for the Deaf is situated in Northeast Washington, at Kendall Green. It is surrounded by about one hundred acres of ground. Until within a year it has been known as the Columbian Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, but the Board of Directors, at the request of the alumni, wisely changed it to Gallaudet College, in honor and memory of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of deaf-mute education in America. The honor is also deserved by the Hon. Edward M. Gallaudet, LL.D., its president at the time. He is probably the greatest teacher of mutes now living. He is certainly the most distinguished one. It is the only real college for this unfortunate class in the world. All the other schools for mutes in this country only prepare them to enter this institution. The college embraces, in a four years’ course, languages, mathematics, natural science, history, philosophy, and political science—about the usual classical course in any college.
They are instructed by what is known as the combined method—that is, both the oral and sign methods are used.
Mutes among themselves greatly prefer signs. All mutes can not learn the oral method, and I know by experience among mutes that the talking which they learn is not very satisfactory. Their voices are too loud or too low; in some of them the sound of the voice is most distressing, not having the ear by which to regulate it.
I met one woman in Washington stone-deaf who could talk as well as any one, and I had met her three times before I knew she was deficient in any sense. Then she took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the window, saying: “I do believe you are talking. You know I can not hear thunder, so I must see your lips.”
The director for the school of mutes in Japan made a lengthy visit to Washington to study the methods of the college instruction, and several countries of Europe have sent delegates to examine its workings. Dr. Gallaudet has visited every great school for mutes in Europe—not once, but several times—so that he brings to his great work not only his own skill, knowledge, and experience, but also the results of his observations in many lands.
Congress appropriates about $50,000 per year for the support of this college. Here the mutes from the District of Columbia and of the Army and Navy, besides sixty indigent students from different parts of the country, without charge for board, receive a college training. Beside these there are many who pay full tuition. The annual attendance is between one and two hundred. About six hundred young men and women have been graduated, showing that deafness does not interfere with the highest mental culture.
The following extract from the report of 1893 will give an idea of the beneficent work of this government institution. The report says:
Fifty-seven who have gone out from the college have been engaged in teaching; four have entered the Christian ministry; three have become editors and publishers of newspapers; three others have taken positions connected with journalism; fifteen have entered the civil service of the government—one of these, who had risen rapidly to a high and responsible position, resigned to enter upon the practise of law in patent cases in Cincinnati and Chicago, and has been admitted to practise in the Supreme Court of the United States; one is the official botanist of a State, who has correspondents in several countries of Europe who have repeatedly purchased his collections, and he has written papers upon seed tests and related subjects which have been published and circulated by the Agricultural Department; one, while filling a position as instructor in a Western institution, has rendered important service to the Coast Survey as a microscopist, and one is engaged as an engraver in the chief office of the Survey. Of three who became draftsmen in architects’ offices, one is in successful practise as an architect on his own account, which is also true of another, who completed his preparation by a course of study in Europe; one has been repeatedly elected recorder of deeds in a Southern city, and two others are recorders’ clerks in the West; one was elected and still sits as a city councilman; another has been elected city treasurer and is at present cashier of a national bank; one has become eminent as a practical chemist and assayer; two are members of the faculty of the college, and two others are rendering valuable service as instructors therein; some have gone into mercantile and other offices; some have undertaken business on their own account, while not a few have chosen agricultural and mechanical pursuits, in which the advantages of thorough mental training will give them a superiority over those not so well educated. Of those alluded to as having engaged in teaching, one has been the principal of a flourishing institution in Pennsylvania; one is now in his second year as principal of the Ohio institution; one has been at the head of a day-school in Cincinnati, and later of the Colorado institution; a third has had charge of the Oregon institution; a fourth is at the head of a day-school in St. Louis; three others have respectively founded and are now at the head of schools in New Mexico, North Dakota, and Evansville, Ind., and others have done pioneer work in establishing schools in Florida and in Utah.
In Dr. Gallaudet’s travels he was met in every country by the educated mutes, and by his sign language could converse with them, showing that the world has at least one universal language. Every honor that grateful hearts could shower upon a devoted friend and philanthropist was shown the doctor in his travels in Europe. He deserves them all.