[Footnote 1:  The brilliant but wily Sicard, whose “show” pupils were accustomed to honoring drafts at sight in appropriate responses to all sorts of questions, acting upon the motto, Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur, schooled certain pupils in deciphering writing in the air, and was thus prepared, in emergencies at his public exhibitions, to convey intimations of the answers, while supposed to be using “signs” in putting questions.]

Finger-spelling would appear to be a far more convenient, easy, rapid, and accurate adjunct to speech or substitute for it than writing.

It is a common error to consider the ordinary manual alphabets as deaf-mute alphabets and finger-spelling as the sign-language of the deaf.  Finger-spelling is to the deaf a borrowed art.  It is used by many of the educated deaf and their friends as a substitute for the sign-language, and it enables them also to supply the deficiencies of the sign-language by incorporating words from written language.  Scagliotti, of Turin, devised a system of initial signs[2] which begin with letters of the manual alphabet, and Dr. Isaac Lewis Peet, of New York, has made a similar application of manual letters to signs to suggest words of our written language to the initiated deaf.  But it should not be forgotten that practice in finger-spelling is practice in our language.

[Footnote 2:  Quatrieme Circulaire, Paris, 1836, p. 16.  Carton’s Memoire, 1845, p. 73.]

The origin of finger-spelling is not known.  Barrois, a distinguished orientalist, in his Dactylologie et Langage primitif[3], ingeniously traces evidences of finger-spelling, from the Assyrian antiquities down to the fifteenth century upon monuments of art.

[Footnote 3:  Barrois:  Dactylologie et langage primitif, Paris, 1850, Firmin Didot freres.]

The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were familiar with manual arithmetic and finger-numeration, as quaint John Bulwer shows by numerous citations in his Chironomia (1644).  The earliest finger-alphabets extant appear to have been based upon finger-signs for numbers, as, for instance, that given by the Venerable Bede (672-735) in his De Loguela per Gestum Digitorum sive Indigitatione, figured in the Ratisbon edition of 1532.[4] Monks and others who had special reason to prize secret and silent modes of communication, beyond doubt invented and used many forms of finger alphabets as well as systems of manual signs.[5] The oldest plates in the library of the National Deaf Mute College are found in the Thesaurus Artificiosae Memoriae of frater Cosmas P. Rossellius of Florence, printed in 1579, which gives three forms of one-hand alphabets.  Bonet’s work[6] of 1620 gives one form of the one hand Spanish manual alphabet, which contains forms identical with certain letters in the alphabets of 1579.  This was introduced into France by Pereire and taught to the Abbe de l’Epee