And now the chapel bell.
I hear the tread of pioneers,
Of nations yet to be,
The first low wash of waves where soon
Shall roll a human sea.
XXI
BRANCHES OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE
INTERIOR
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.