On December 31, 1920, when the clock strikes the hour of midnight and the bells and whistles and the shouts of the people proclaim the advent of the coming year, throw wide your windows and your doors, that the old 1920 may find his way out and the new '21 his way in. Throw wide the windows and doors of your home, and of your mind and of your heart, and let the old prejudices, the sensitive hurts you have harbored, the hesitancy, the feeble fears, fly away; for with the new year will come the happy fairies of good hope, courage, laughter, and friendship, and they will brighten your life and lead you along a shining

way.

From California I have this little message:

A happy spirit, a smiling face, service, and faith in God are the secrets. If you have them, other people do not mind; they even forget you cannot hear, especially if you read the lips. I sometimes wonder if all those who are hard of hearing or deaf could only get the vision of true happiness and faith, what an influence the deaf, as a class, could make felt in this old world of ours. And I hope the Friendly Corner will help, not only to bring us such a vision, but help us to practise it.

And right after that, as though in answer to it, came a letter from a new friend in Indiana, who says:

It has been my lot to travel the thorny, difficult road of partial deafness ever since I was 15 years old. Now I am 38 and can still hear the Victrola, talk over the telephone, etc., but do not hear ordinary conversation. In the very beginning of my trouble I was told that there probably was no help for it, and, under the inspiring teaching of my dear mother, I determined to "Carry my cross, not drag it." Oh, I have had my moments, moments of depression, of fierce rebellion, of heart-rending grief, to say nothing of the awkwardness, embarrassments, etc., which go hand in hand with this affliction; but always I have come up smiling, with renewed courage to go on.

This thought of making our influence felt in the world leads me to the consideration of the formation of clubs. In the October number of THE VOLTA REVIEW Miss Peck gave us a splendid article, entitled "Community Centers for the Deafened: How to Organize Them." It is a very broad and thorough dissertation on the subject. However, I have had letters from a number of readers who wish to start their oaks from acorns,

and who are somewhat alarmed at the vast amount of work that starting a club seems to involve. To them I should like to submit a plan which another friend proposed recently. These are the steps

she advocates:

ple.

1. Bring together a few hard-of-hearing peo

2. Appoint a chairman.

3. Hold some meetings to become acquainted. 4. Appoint a committee to draw up a simple constitution, in which only those with impaired hearing are allowed to hold office. Do not admit the congenitally deaf to membership-in the beginning, at least.

5. After the adoption of the constitution, the officers will be elected and assume office. I would suggest a President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer.

6. Develop the work yourselves. Let it be a demonstration of what you, yourselves, can do for the community, trying to meet your own local needs.

Later, you are far better able to become incorporated under a constitution which you will have found by experience to meet your require

ments.

Have you any criticism to make of this? We want to form some plan for organization that will be applicable everywhere, and that will work out equally well in one place as in another.

There is one other question I should like to bring up here. In every city there are a large number of deaf people. One or two of them write me and ask me how to form a club and how to reach the people for the club. After they get started, the new members will bring in their

live.

I want to share with you a letter from Ohio. The thoughts presented are not new ones, but are freshly told:

I have been deaf long enough to know that there are advantages in being so. For instance, I was over in Pittsburgh recently and shared a room with a young lady who had a threemonths-old son with her. The next morning I learned that sonny had squalled almost all night, and I hadn't heard a bit of it!

When a very young girl and through the following years, I knew many people with various kinds of afflictions. After a paralytic stroke, my grandfather's speech was very defective, and during the last year of his life he could say absolutely nothing. He was a prominent lawyer and could ably express the thoughts of his unusually brilliant mind. To him, this loss of speech was more than an affliction; it was a curse. A friend of our family was a crippled lady, whose only means of locomotion was a wheeled chair. I have seen her slip painfully from that chair and crawl on her hands and knees up a long flight of stairs to a dressmaking shop, where she worked all day. Two more friends were mute sisters, who always attended all the parties and lectures in the little town where we were then living. Neither had learned the sign language, by the way, but used speech reading altogether.

Knowing brave people like these, my deafness dwindles into nothingness in comparison. I have had lonely friends cry briny tears down my neck-friends who seemingly had everything to make them happy. Yet here they were, sobbing out their loneliness to me-yes, to mewhose dull ears could scarcely understand what their trouble was.

Deafness proves to be the greatest handicap, I believe, to the person who must earn his or her living. Among the deafened people I know, one is a linotype operator; several ladies are dressmakers; one young lady studied to be a trained nurse after she became deaf, and she did fine work in several army camps during the war; another young lady is collector for an electric light company and enjoys her work, which keeps her out of doors. I did clerical work in an office for three and a half years and am now working in a bookbindery. Only two of these people have studied lip-reading, but I know from experience that they would make life easier for themselves and every one else if they would study it.

The main point that I have tried to make is this: That deafened people are no more lonely because of their affliction. From the confidences others have shared with me, I know that there are many aching hearts among people who have no "afflictions" at all. It strikes me that many deafened people use their affliction as an excuse to press the sob-stuff pedal. Well, quit it and get to work! If you don't want to keep cheerful for your own sake, then

There are many occupations open to the deaf, but in this reign of the H. C. L., when eggs are as precious as pearls and the Hen is Queen of the Day, what could be more profitable than the poultry business? I have a catalogue and literature from our Indiana friend who has carried on this business successfully and who wishes to pass on the trick to you.

I was terribly mistaken when I suggested that you do not laugh at parties. Why, I have been sent twenty or more games with a laugh (or at least a smile) in every one of them. They are lively competitive games, any number of stunts, pencil and paper games, and such enticing occupations as "An Hour of Newspaper Fun" and Fan-Tan. If any one would like the directions for any of these, I should be glad to supply them; only please designate what type you want, for there are so many (although not so many that I would not accept more).

Our embryonic Correspondence Club promises to have a vigorous growth. You who have not joined do not know what you are missing. Write me today and tell me how eager you are to enter "The Friendly Corner," 35th Street and Volta Place, Washington, D. C. Please don't forget to enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope when you want a personal reply.

Yours sincerely,

FRIEND O'MINE:

THE FRIENDLY LADY.

I should like to send you a sunbeam, or a twinkle of some bright star, or a tiny piece of the downy fleece that clings to a cloud afar. I should like to send you the essence of myriad sun-kissed flowers, or the lilting song, as it floats along, of a brook through fairy bowers. I should like to send you the dewdrops that glisten at break of day, and then at night the eerie light that mantles the Milky Way. I should like to send you the power that nothing can overthrow-the power to smile and laugh the while ajourneying through life you go. But these are mere fanciful wishes, I'll send you Godspeed instead, and I'll clasp your hand— then you'll understand all the things I have left unsaid.-W. Dayton Wegefarth.

Do your pupils express themselves in English? If not, you are not accomplishing the end for which the school was established.William 1. Caldwell, in The California News.

HAT IS the early history of the

W 'deaf?

In ancient times a deaf child was considered useless and, at best, was barely suffered to live. In Sparta, because a deaf person could not reverence its laws and defend the country, he was put to death. Rome was the first nation to recognize the legal rights of a deaf person, but it was the universal sentiment that he was wholly incapable of instruction. Lucretius, the Roman poet, writes: "To instruct the deaf, no art could ever reach, No care improve them, no wisdom teach.”

History has left meager records of the early work of instructing the deaf, but there can be no doubt that the deaf first enlisted the sympathy of priests and missionaries who, by various devices, gave them the rudiments of an education and faith in a Divine Being. The first known attempt to teach the deaf was made in Spain about 1530, by Peter Ponce, a monk. Two of his contemporaries tell us that he taught some of his pupils to write and to speak. From that time until the latter part of the eighteenth century, attempts to educate the deaf by various methods were made in Italy, Spain, Germany, and England.

Where and when were the first schools for the deaf established in Europe and in the United States?

Schools were established at Paris in 1760 by the Abbe De l'Eppe; at Leipzig, in 1778, by Samuel Heinicke, and at Edinburgh, in 1764. by Thomas Braidwood.

The first attempt to educate the deaf in the United States was made in Virginia. Thomas Bolling, of Goochland County, Virginia, had three deaf children. They were the direct descendants

*From the Philadelphia Record Educational Guide.

of Jane Rolfe, the granddaughter of Pocahontas. About 1771 these children were sent to Mr. Braidwood's school in Scotland. They had a hearing brother, William Bolling, who was a prominent Virginian. Two of his children, William Albert and Mary, were deaf. Through his efforts the first private school for the deaf was established at Cobbs, near Petersburg, Virginia. The pupils were taught by a young member of the Braidwood family. Among the pupils was a grandson of Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independ

ence.

These facts are of especial interest because our President's wife, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, is a direct descendant of Thomas Bolling. Her maiden name was Miss Edith Bolling.

The first permanent school for the deaf was established in Hartford, Connecticut, by Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, in 1817.

Today the United States takes first rank in the education of the deaf. This is probably because the idea that a deaf child is entitled to an education just as a hearing child is, and that he is not an object of charity, has spread very rapidly.

There are quite a number of day schools and private schools for the deaf, but a majority of the deaf children of school age are taught in residential schools. Deaf pupils are found singly or in groups, in various parts of the State. Just as better results are obtained in the public schools by establishing a large central school rather than a number of small schools, it is found that better economic and educational results are obtained by grouping deaf children where they can receive the intensive training they need.

What are the causes of deafness?
Forty per cent of the deaf are born

deaf or become deaf from illness before they have acquired speech. The principal causes of deafness for 54 per cent are brain fever, meningitis, scarlet fever, catarrh, convulsions, measles, mastoiditis, abscess of the ear, whooping cough, falls, and accidents. For the remaining 6 per cent the causes are unknown.

What sort of pupils are enrolled in schools for the deaf?

Various types of children enter a school for the deaf. There are those who were born deaf, those who became deaf before they could speak, those who became deaf after they could speak, but retain only a few indistinct words and phrases, those who have been partially deaf from childhood, and those who became deaf after they learned to talk and have retained their speech. Each pupil has to receive the special instruction suited to his individual needs. In the last class are often found children who became deaf after they were 10 or 12 years of age. They feel their loss keenly and usually it takes them some time to readjust themselves to an entirely new way of living and to the new difficulties that deafness has brought.

sisters. As a consequence, a deaf child must be in school for several years before he can approach the mental development of a hearing child of the same age.

If parents understand a deaf child's difficulties, a great deal can be done to help him before he enters school. He should be taught to dress himself, to feed himself, and to depend upon himself in various ways. Too often his handicap makes the father and mother feel that he is different from his brothers and sisters, and that special privileges must be granted to make him happy and contented. This is not true. He can

follow the same rules that are made for the rest of the family, and should early learn that every individual has certain property rights that his deafness will not permit him to violate. He should be taught to obey. He can learn to read the lips. Parents may teach him to understand what they say by constant repetition of simple commands. They should encourage him to watch their lips carefully. The one speaking to him should remember to have the light full on his mouth, to hold the head

Of all the ills to which our bodies are subject, deafness least affects the physical or mental vigor, and yet there is no other infirmity which so completely shuts a child out of the companionship and society of his home and his friends. While the fact that a child is deaf is greatly to be regretted, there is no reason for the family to neglect him or to give him undue liberty or license. A deaf child is often thought incorrigible, when his behavior is due solely to his inability to express himself and to understand those about him. It is certain that a deaf child has the same mind and heart, the same talents, and the same affections that have been implanted in his hearing brothers and sisters. They only need careful cultivation. In the hearing world language is a language of sounds. and is addressed to the ear. Ignorant of language because he cannot hear, the deaf child must be taught by a method addressing itself to the eye to enable him to compete with his hearing brothers and

attempt should be made to have him talk, because bad speech habits may be formed.

It is much more difficult to correct bad speech habits than it is to establish good speech habits.

What is done for a deaf child after he enters school?

When a child enters school, language in both its spoken and written forms. must be given to him. Learning how to talk and to use our language is a slow process for a deaf child. It requires an instructor with patience and ability as well as special training. A hearing child acquires his speech sound by sound, combining and babbling these sounds in syllables before attempting words. A deaf child must be induced to follow the same process. He must employ his eyes and his sense of touch instead of his ears, in order to place his tongue, palate, and lips in the various positions used in making speech. For many years schools for the deaf have used sense-training materials similar to those presented to the educa

tional world by Madame Montessori. A deaf child has a peculiar need of that sort of training in order that his other senses may take the place of the sense he lacks. During the first school year a sixor seven-year-old child of average mental ability may learn to read from the lips, speak, and write one hundred or two hundred words. The skill exhibited in forming these words into sentences depends on the ability of the child. From this simple beginning, the child is taken through a course of study similar to that pursued in the public schools. He has He has daily drill in speech and lip-reading. He must travel a long and hard road before there is sufficient knowledge of English to make it possible for him to read with ease the school text-books, current publications, and to express himself in good English.

What home life does an institution provide?

Because a deaf child must be out of his home for nine months every year, the school attempts to give him just as much of the home environment as possible. A pupil spends on the average five hours in school, two hours in the shop, and one hour in the study-room. He has the advantage of constant supervision, regular hours and habits, carefully planned menus, and a carefully outlined program of work, sleep, and recreation. During his hours of recreation, he is counseled and guided just as he is in his own home. Cultured men and women form his habits, help him to establish moral principles, and instruct him in the details of home life.

Are trades taught?

In vocational work, schools for the deaf have been pioneers. This is an important part of the work of every school, where at least two hours per day must be spent in the shop. There is a long and varied list of occupations to which a deaf person can adapt himself. It is impossible for a school to teach all of them. Most of the schools give instruction in printing, tailoring, baking, carpentry, painting, and farming. The girls take up domestic science in all its branches, dressmaking, and millinery.

What do deaf pupils do when they leave school?

A pupil may or may not follow his trade after leaving school. The great value of the industrial training does not lie in the knowledge of a particular trade, but in the habits of industry that are instilled and the manual skill imparted. When a deaf pupil goes out into the world, he is not afraid of work, for he has been taught to accept it as a matter of course. Many of the deaf girls marry and become successful homekeepers.

A few of the deaf, who are not tempted by the offers of work, continue their education. Some go to Gallaudet College, Washington, D. C., the only college for the deaf in the world, and others go to high schools, colleges, technical schools, and medical schools. The deaf are successful; some are distinguished as artists, chemists, architects, draftsmen, electricians, dentists, editors, and ministers.

Is it worth while to educate the deaf? Character is the one thing a deaf pupil must have in order that he may become a citizen worthy of respect. From the beginning to the end of this school course, every effort is made to teach him to think clearly and to express his thoughts in good English, to instil a love of justice, honor, and truth and to train his hand in order that he may secure a comfortable livelihood. It is a rare thing to find a deaf loafer or to see one in the police court or in prison. Deaf beggars are usually fakes. The value of educating the deaf is proven by the fact that they become industrious, self-supporting, law-abiding citizens.

SPORADIC CONGENITAL DEAFNESS-Love maintains that sporadic cases of deafness are not only clinically but genetically identical with the hereditary cases; that sporadic congenital deafness is hereditary and that such heredity is mendelian. Journal of Laryngology, Rhinology, and Otology, London.

MEASLES AND WHOOPING COUGH-It is hard for people to realize that there are more deaths from measles and whooping cough than from scarlet fever. Greater efforts in school hygiene would seem to be the only way in which this problem can be coped with successfully, combined with the education of parents in the necessity for the observation of quarantine and isolation procedures.-S. H. Osborn, Commonhealth, March-April, 1920.