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Part 4 Gallaudet Throughout her life, Sigourney was generous to Gallaudet in her praise for his work with Alice, the Asylum, and “the insane,” as well as for the books he wrote. As we have seen in the introduction to this book, Gallaudet himself had high regard for Sigourney’s poetry and for her work with Alice, though the makers of his posthumous reputation did not. After their respective marriages , Sigourney probably associated more with Mrs. Gallaudet, the former Sophia Fowler, by way of her charity work than she would have with Gallaudet himself. This section concludes our book with three pieces about Gallaudet. Excerpt on school rewards from Letters of Life (1866) This brief passage explaining Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet’s “system of ethics” comes from the same section of Sigourney’s autobiography as the excerpt on Alice given in part 1. Gallaudet had been out of deaf education for the last twenty-one years of his life and, by the time this passage was written, dead for over a decade beyond that, but Sigourney still identifies him as the principal of the Asylum. The discussion recorded here must have occurred before he left that position in 1830. • A prominent objection to the distribution of school rewards, is the possibility of the odium of injustice. Yet there are some whose system of ethics is so delicate as wholly to discard the principle of emulation. 142 Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 142 4/4/2013 12:35:33 PM Of this class was my friend the Rev. Mr. Gallaudet, the accomplished principal of the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb. Ever was he saying to me: “I dissent from your theory. You know what Book classes ‘emulation ’ with ‘wrath, strifes, seditions,’ and other still more wicked works.” “Yet does not the same Sacred Volume appeal to our hope as well as our fear?—as those who run in a race for the ‘prize of their high calling.’[”]* “I am sure you ought to agree with me, that a right education should teach to do right from the love of goodness, not the lucre of gain.” Our arguments, sometimes “long drawn out,” usually ended in my confession of inability to manage a school without the aid of this powerful principle. I was sure that the expectation of a meed fairly earned, which would impart happiness to parents and friends, gave strength to their young hearts to overcome indolence and press on in the path of habitual duty. I felt that their guard from the dangers of competition was in the truth and warmth of their own friendships. “A Little Girl to her Friend” (1834) This poem was written during the years after Gallaudet resigned his position at the Asylum. In 1834, the year he was finally ordained, he was intermittently preaching at a state prison and a county jail and was turning out children’s books at a rapid pace. The Child’s Book of the Soul, which is the subject of this poem, first appeared the year of his resignation, 1830, along with The Child’s Picture Defining and Reading Book. These were followed by The Youth’s Book of Natural Theology (1832), Scripture Biography for the Young (1833), The Child’s Book on Repentance, The Mother’s Primer, and The Child’s Book of Bible Stories (all in 1834), The Every-Day Christian (1835), and, beginning in 1840, collaborations with Horace Hooker including The Practical *A paraphrase of The Letter of Paul to the Philippians 3:14. In this passage, Paul has been warning the Philippians against Jews who advise circumcision and, using the metaphor of a foot race in which God is the judge, telling them that, for his part, he sets his eyes on the prize, variously interpreted as grace, salvation, eternal glory, or being called to heaven with Jesus. Gallaudet 143 Sigourney Main Pgs 1-162.indd 143 4/4/2013 12:35:33 PM ...

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