John Clyne

“ In some cases we were cruelly victimised, and the health of our darling grievously impaired. In a few instances the truth was told us as plainly as perhaps they thought we could bear it, namely, that medical science could do nothing whatever for Mary. One flagrant case in London came before the police magistrate, and at least two others might have gone; but certain difficulties in establishing legal guilt in that kind of swindling stayed our hands. To mere exposure the men were callous, if indeed they did not flourish upon it, notoriety standing them in the same stead as celebrity. ”

“ The young musicians sang with a will to show themselves virtuous, and obtain the extra cake and halfpence which form virtue’s reward. As the impressive sounds of many well-drilled young voices swelled on our ears, I saw George with moist eyes (he was partly affected by the singing, and partly by his own eloquence) , turning to little Mary, who sat playing at his feet with some toys Miss Smithers had just given her. He lifted the child up, and tried to divert her towards the singing; but after looking vacantly at the group, she struggled to be set down again to her playthings. ”

“ We determined at every cost to exhaust the possibility of cure, before we considered her deafness as anything but an accident which admitted of removal; for we steadily would not regard it as one of her conditions of existence. For some years our life was little else than waiting upon doctors, for the promise is to those who persevere. ”

“ She had been at school wearing on to five years when a somewhat severe illness attacked her father. Mary, informed of it by letter, begged to be allowed to nurse him. Her father afterwards said that he found her mere presence in the room, whether still or in movement, had a soothing effect upon him, more than the prescribed opium could exert. Perhaps from being habituated to read thought on the countenance before it took expression in words, she was better than another able to minister relief to hidden suffering. ”

“ Before they commenced the hymn, George made them a small oration. He had not so forgotten his town-councillor habits, but that an opportunity like this, to air his rhetoric, came like a true Christmas friend.
George’s oratory was decidedly of the fervid cast. He told the school-children that music was the great gift which we held in common with higher intelligences. In fact, deadness to music was a mark upon any one which meant “let not that man be trusted.” A taste for music was the sure concomitant of virtue, there could be no doubt of it ”

“ Now and then odd tastes may show themselves, but whatever is odd—whatever departs from the common standard by which we regulate preferences and aversions—is exceptional. If a deaf person prefers deafness, his case, to say the least of it, is singular. I never knew or heard of an instance of the kind, and can more easily imagine a mistake as to the spirit (for deaf persons are not devoid of drollery) , in which a preference of the sort was expressed, than gravely accept your statement that in a deaf person taste so manifested itself as a fact to be reasoned from. ”

“ Mary was a year and a-half old, with her father still unaware that for her music must ever be a frozen fountain. The children of the village school had come up to the hall to sing the Christmas hymn. They were well-trained in most of their schooling, but unusually so in music, in which Miss Smithers, their teacher, was a proficient. She has since, under another name, obtained celebrity in the music world. ”

“ Surely a class of schools which essays to put into ten thousand poor dumb mouths an available substitute for the speech we with reason prize so much, constitutes a section of England’s educational apparatus deserving proper recognition. ”

“ He could very easily conceive of a pleasant family group sitting around a fire that burns warm and cheery in a locked-up house, whose broken bell-wires have ceased to tell that a stranger is at the gates. ”

“ The skies the people see are so and so. Their fields are thus and thus. Their houses are built in this style. In that land the tea we use is got. The fact of tea being the leaf of a plant, prepared after such and such a fashion, can form no difficulty which you cannot easily conceive removed by reference to plants within reach. ”

“ Created seemed to me harder of interpretation. After much thought I drew the figure of a blacksmith at work, and wrote down the word making. I then pointed to the word created, to signify that making and creating were similar acts. I had been told by a friend how an ingenious lady once explained and to a deaf child by tying a thread between a pen and an inkstand. The piece of thread was and. I therefore, on my system of extracting much meaning from few materials, tied together the bottle and water-jug which I had already used to explain in and beginning. ”

“ In a moment the boy underlines the words—able to hear.
“The fact is,” the master proceeds improving the subject, “that deaf human beings are very similar to others, liking what people commonly like, and disliking what is commonly thought irksome. ”