Excerpt from Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes, Broadway, West Side, Betw. 44th and 45th Sts., New-York: Third Annual Report, May 10th, 1870

This favorable view has since then received the strong est corroboration. Wherever our pupils have had an op portunity of exhibiting their acquirements, limited fiethough they may yet be, they have won golden opinions, not alone for themselves, individually and collectively, but for the school and the system. In fact, the attention of the Prin cipals and Directors of the various Institutions through out the United States, has been attracted in a greater or less degree, to this method of educating the Deaf Mutes, and there can be no doubt as to the fact, that the discredit and ridicule formerly attached to it by many of them, is being gradually overcome and the tendency to, and desire of giving it, if not a trial, at least the benefit of unprejudiced examination, is becoming more and more manifest. In deed, SO far as the large class of semi-deaf and semi-mutes is concerned, the question may be considered as posi tively settled, beyond cavil or doubt. Unless articulation and lip-reading are practiced with them, it is impossible to' preserve their speech, while there is comparatively little trouble by pursuing this method in enabling them to retain language not alone, but also the natural pitch of voice and pronunciation. The question, there fore, is practically reduced to that of completely deaf children, either congenitally, or by having lost hearing be fore the third year.

One half of the battle, therefore, would seem to be won in reducing the question to this point.

But'if the articulate method is forcing itself only very Slowly upon the attention of teachers of deaf mutes, who, for consistencys sake, perhaps, are unwilling to adopt it too hastily (l), the people at large, uninfiuenced by such motives, are much more decided in their expressions of approbation at the results of the system. Gratifying evi dence of this has been given on various occasions, most markedly, perhaps, at an exhibition given before the State Senate and Members of Assembly, and at the several an nual exhibitions given by the pupils, to both of which I Shall refer more fully presently.

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