Five photographs illustrative of a little lapse of memory explain better than any words what I mean. Without strict attention to grammar, I will call this Forgetfulness, More Forgetfulness, Most Forgetfulness, Still more Forgetful, Forgotten.
This series will be an object lesson on the debt we all owe that fleeting, intangible thing we call Human Expression.
No article is complete without its story. Mr. Gilby is full of stories, but I have only space for one, and that looks weak on paper when I remember how inimitably it was acted when he gave it to me.
Some time since he was due to give a short address in the schoolroom under the church. The Vicarage adjoins the sacred edifice, and he therefore decided it was unnecessary to change the light indoor shoes he was wearing in his study. Accordingly he wore them on the platform downstairs and commenced his address.
A few moments later he happened to quote the text in which the words, "I cast my shoe," occur. Now obviously the best sign for the expression of this idea was a gentle kick. Mr. Gilby gave it, but the demonstration proved much more literal than he had intended, for a second later his shoe flew through the air and dropped in the midst of an immensely amused audience.
The story emphasises Mr. Gilby's belief that humour is, and always should be, a valuable ally in the higher education of the deaf and dumb.
It is an infallible means of securing that closer understanding and sympathy between teacher and pupil which raises teaching from the dull mechanical level of routine to a fine art.
Humour in his case is a natural gift—perhaps one of his greatest. It peeps out unbidden in his sermons. It renders his lectures and addresses delightful to deaf, dumb, and hearing visitors alike, and one cannot but feel that in all the many branches of his work it turns sadness into sunshine and depression into an unfaltering hope for the future.
The scope of this article on St. Saviour's Church does not permit of our entering upon the hotly-contested methods of educating the deaf, whether by the lips or by manual signs or spelling. Mr. Gilby is one of the Government Inspectors of Schools, and, having been born of deaf parents, and brought up amongst the afflicted, may reasonably be presumed to have a right judgment in these matters. For himself, he is an ardent upholder of the Combined System—often known as the American way of instructing the deaf. He differs in toto from any who may think that Missions to the Deaf are unnecessary, for by learning speech they are raised to the same level as their more fortunate brethren who can hear.
In conclusion I cannot repay Mr. Gilby's courtesy and kind assistance in the preparation of this article better than by repeating the wish I feel to be nearest his heart:—