Deaf American Prose 1830-1930

Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher

48 Joseph Mount, “Joe the Jersey Mute” Joseph Mount, “Joe the Jersey Mute” (1827–unknown) Born in New Jersey in 1927, Mount attended the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf between 1837 and 1842. After leaving school, Mount published numerous expository and humorous pieces in area and regional newspapers and magazines, many of them published under the pseudonym, “Joe the Jersey Mute.” He was an educator at the Kansas School for the Deaf in Baldwin, Kansas, from 1865 to 1867, and in 1867, Mount worked with the state of Arkansas to open a school for the deaf there, with himself as principal. As “Joe the Jersey Mute,” he wrote “Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher,” parts 1 and 2, for The Ladies’ Repository: A Monthly Periodical, Devoted to Literature, Arts, and Religion (1857, 1858). The latter of the two pieces is included in this collection. Mount wrote and published in an impressive array of local, regional, and national publications; one of his short character pieces, “Ellen Galt Martin” was published in Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine (1858). He also wrote a series called “A Leaf from a Teacher’s Diary” which was published in several places, including The Illinois Teacher (1861); one of the series is included here and was originally published in 1865 in An Account of St. Ann’s Church for Deaf Mutes and Articles of Prose and Poetry by Deaf Mutes. His year of death is unverifiable.9 c Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher Queer Ideas It is now close to seven years ago that I sat down in my easy chair and corrected the compositions of my class. While I was thus engaged, one of my girls, who was remark9 . “The Arkansas School,” The Silent Worker 24, no. 9 (June 1912): 157; Harry G. Lang and Bonnie Meath-Lang, Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 68; Christopher Krentz, ed., A Mighty Change: An Anthology of Deaf American Writing, – (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2000). “Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher” is from The Ladies’ Repository 18, no. 9 (September 1858). Recollections of a Deaf and Dumb Teacher 49 able only for the snowy whiteness of her skin, came to me and said: “Master, if I neglect to wash my neck and it becomes dirty, will my heart also become dirty?” I could not help laughing at her strange question. Next came a pale-looking boy, who asked me if the warm weather which we then had came from South America. He thought that the cold weather of winter was unknown in that quarter. His sister, also deaf, inquired of me if it was not right for a sister to love her brother. She came to my school in her nineteenth year, and consequently made little progress in her studies. Her physiognomy was not any thing intellectual. A small boy, who was considered by his companions as a prodigy of genius, constructed the following sentence: “John bad God will whip.” The John here mentioned had offended the writer of this most ungrammatical sentence. John, though only seven years of age at the time of which I speak, wrote remarkably well, considering the two years he had been under instruction. He could write out a short story with considerable accuracy. His earliest essays in this kind abounded in grammatical blunders, although the ideas were good. I will give a specimen: “A man rides a wild horse. He mounts it. He rides it. He whips it. It runs very fast. He thinks to buy another a horse. He wishes to drinks water. He dismounts from it, he ties a horse’s rein to a post. He walks to a pump, he drinks water, then he mounts it, he whips it. It is angry, runs very fast, he sees a large house and horses in the field, he wishes to buy the horses, he takes care to feed the horses well.” [sic] Quite in contrast with his earliest efforts at composition, in a literary point of view, is the following production of this same John after two years’ instruction: “Mr. Joe, the Jersey Mute, is in the habit of corresponding with Mr. Bowdle. He gets paper, ink, and a pen. He sits down on a chair, and writes a funny story, which he sends to the wife of Mr. Bowdle. She reads it—she laughs. She shows her husband the letter of Mr. Joe, the Jersey...