Within arise fond memories
    Of moonlight evenings long since vanished,
  Once full of life as waves and breeze,
    From this familiar shore now banished.

  Hushed in the grove is the birds’ song,
    Spring’s blossoms tempests caused to perish;
  Yet what through eye and ear did throng
    The heart for evermore will cherish.

AUBER FORESTIER.

THE INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES.

While I was a teacher in the Illinois Institution for the Deaf and Dumb the following letters were written by some of the pupils.  The first was written the day after Thanksgiving, and ran thus: 

    “DEAR MOTHER:  We had Thanks be unto God, no school yesterday,
    Turkey mince-pies, and many other kinds of fruits.”

The day after Christmas a boy wrote:  “We had Glory to God in the highest, no school yesterday, and a fine time.”  What he really meant to say was, that they had a motto in evergreens of “Glory to God in the Highest,” and they had also a holiday.

This motto, by the way, got up by the pupils themselves, was striking.  It was placed over one of the dining-room doors, and the ceiling being very low it was necessarily put just under it.  A single glance sufficed to show the utter impossibility of getting the “Glory” any higher.

The younger pupils write in almost every letter, “There are ——­ pupils in this institution, ——­ boys and ——­ girls.  All of the pupils are well, but some are sick.”  This is English pretty badly broken.

These letters serve to illustrate a remark which Principal Peet of the New York institution made to me not long ago:  “The great difficulty in instructing deaf mutes is in teaching them the English language.”  In this, of course, he had reference to the deaf mutes of our own country, and his statement appears, on its face, paradoxical.  That American children should learn at least to read the English language, even when they cannot speak it, seems quite a matter of course.  The fact is, however, different.  The first disadvantage under which the deaf mute labors is the limited extent to which his mental powers have been developed.  This deficiency is attributable to two causes—­his deprivation of the immense amount of information to be gained by the sense of hearing, and his want of language.  Before an infant, one possessed of all its faculties, has acquired at least an understanding of articulate language, it has but vague and feeble ideas.  No clear, distinct conception is shaped in its mind.  “Ideas,” says M. Marcel in his essay on the Study of Languages, “are not innate:  they must be received before they can be communicated.  This is so true that native curiosity impels us to listen long before we can speak....  Impression ... must therefore precede expression.”  Real thought, therefore, it will be seen, grows with the child’s acquisition of language—­an acquisition which is obtained