Charles Adams Jeffries

“ The deaf and dumb child finds himself in a world of fearful stillness—one everlasting silence, through which comes no word to explain anything. He must learn to talk on his fingers, that a certain set of signals is this thing and another that thing. Always he has to be not only told of a thing, but to be shown it, or shown how it is done. When he has learned to talk on his fingers, and mastered the alphabet, the teachers at Darlington commence on the task of teaching him to read what people say by the movements of their lips, and to articulate in return in n voice that he himself cannot hear. ”

“ But that other babe, clinging to his little rock in the midst of eternal silence and darkness, living helplessly amidst utter stagnation, finds himself in a place without form, a void of which he is not a part. ”

“ The blind babe can cling to his father's shoulder, and go out to explore among sounds, and shiver and thrill as fresh notes boom into his reverberating universe; for him there is romance and adventure and sensation among the tumbling waves of sound. He lives and feels; and, as long as his creature comfort are supplied by the unseen father and mother, can be happy and live a life that has at least variety to spice it. ”

“ So indifferent is the State towards the welfare of those afflicted little ones, that there is no law compelling parents to educate them, as there is with children who are better able to fight their way in the world without education. ”

“ No adult could live through such an experience: madness or death would end it. Blackness-silence; and the only communication with life, the touch of ghostly hands.
Of her life till she came to Darlington l know nothing. But it must have been terrible indeed, despite all that affection could do. But at last she arrived at Darlington, and found that the hands in the darkness were different to the others she had known before.
In her arms was placed a little doll, and the hand that placed it there took her Own hand and made a sign on the fingers. It was the word "doll" in the finger language. ”

“ He knows not anything, only wants and yearnings that torment him. His is a living death, out of which the helpless baby soul cannot even cry, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
. . . At Darlington they have a little eight-year-old girl who is both deaf and blind. Up to the age of three little Alice Betteridge was a bright little baby, who could see as clearly as any other child, and tripped about chattering as other children do. Then came meningitis ”