The Deaf Mute Howls

10. DR. BELL'S STORIES

DR. BELL'S STORIES ONE UNFORGETTABLE night, Dr. Bell and I ensconced ourselves in a cozy corner at his hotel, and we talked from eight in the evening to four in the morning. We touched on a great variety ofsubjects . To be exact I should say it was he who did the talking, and I the listening. He was a fascinating raconteur. When in good humorand he usually was-he used no heavy, scientific phraseology to overawe me, and in consequence I never noticed the flight oftime. He bared to me the intimate things of his life. He was at one time a teacher ofdeafchildren at Boston, Massachusetts, at a salary ofsix hundred a year. His wife, before her marriage, was one ofhis pupils. He employed, of course, the oral method exclusively, for to him it was the one and only method. He claimed that, in teaching the sign language to deaf children, we give them a language which no one else uses, and encourage the deafto refuse to learn English. It is now clear to me that the doctor was never conscious that he was reasoning from an entirely wrong premise-putting the cart before the horse. I did not then know anything about the subject, so I could not argue with Dr. Bell. Often, he wandered from this subject ofthe deaf, and talked of how, by an accident, he invented the telephone. His wife, while still his pupil, called his attention to a curiosity. She told him offeeling vibrations of sound on her muff while in the streets. It set him to experimenting with various devices, seeking always to use them to help the deafhear. In due course oftime, he developed and made the telephone. 43 THE DEAF MUTE HOWLS He described, in his droll way, how he tried to raise funds to exploit the patent. He offered to sell a half interest to a neighbor for $1,000. But the neighbor guffawed and exclaimed, "What! Me throwaway one thousand good bucks on a scientific toy? Nothing doing!" Today, not even Henry Ford is rich enough to buy that halfinterest. He told me a number ofother interesting anecdotes, but as they have nothing to do with the theme, I have to (most regretfully) omit them. On one occasion, after a long period of silent meditation, he blurted out an exclamation that "all the schools for the deaf, both the combined and pure-oral, should be razed to the ground!" This explosion caused me to prick up my ears. (One ofthe first and only occasions upon which I could use them for any purpose except as ornaments.) He explained that the herding together of the deaf children under one roof cruelly hurt the poor things. Then he proceeded to talk on some of the evils already touched upon in this book. This brilliant flash of truth remained with me-although I did not realize its full significance then. Now that I have come to a realization, may I be pardoned for throwing my cap in the air and shouting, "Three Cheers for the Razing!" As well as my memory will allow, I shall explain how the doctor hoped to improve the methods of education: Deafchildren [he said] should attend public schools for the hearing , where they may play and study on equal terms with children who hear. Teachers, specially trained, should be engaged to keep their progress abreast ofthe others. The children could then live with their own folks, and have all the benefits of home life and influences. In short, they would live the normal life of the hearing. I asked him how he would take care of the children who live apart from the schools where the special teachers work. He dismissed my objections with the statement that in the country 44 THE DEAF MUTE HOWLS districts the children could be housed in cottages in small groups, where a special teacher and his wife would give them the same home influences and care as they would their own children. He stressed the need ofthe deafchildren being kept far apart from their kind to eliminate the faults peculiar to the deaf. He presented more details, but they were couched in scientific terms and now escape my memory. To me, the most impressive feature of his discourse was his championing of the pure-oral method. Having left my school but four years before meeting Dr. Bell, I...