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The Directors "were bound by the terms of the grant from the general government to appropriate its annual income to the benefit of the deaf and dumb of the United States"; (1) and, in order to carry out its provisions, agreed to expend the funds equally among pupils from all States that should send them, and "to extend similar advantages and equal privileges to all its pupils, in whatever State or country they may have been born." (2)

(2) Thirty-Eighth Report, for 1854, p. 21.

In pursuance of the terms of the original subscription, and of the obligation incurred by accepting the grant from Congress, the Asylum has received pupils from most of the United States, and has spent the income of the fund towards defraying the current expenses; the deficiency being divided equally among all the pupils, and paid by their friends or the State by which they were sent. Massachusetts was the first to avail herself of these rights. In the year 1819 she sent twenty pupils, and from that time has made annual appropriations for the same object. For the year 1866, $18,000 were appropriated for the education, clothing, and travelling expenses of pupils sent to the Asylum, the average number being nearly one hundred.

The charge for the first year or two, while the number of pupils was small, was $200 a year. This was soon reduced to $150, then to $115, and in 1826 to $100, at which sum it remained for nearly forty years, until 1863, when it was increased to $125, and in 1865 to $175. The principal of the fund was first encroached upon some years since by the erection of a wing, and subsequently by the increased cost of living.

By the original design, the Board of Directors was to be composed of individuals from different States, who should show their interest by contributing to the funds of the asylum. The by-laws provided that the contribution of five dollars should make a member for one year, fifty dollars a member for life, one hundred dollars a director for life; and that the life directors, with ten others chosen by the society, should manage its concerns. Originally one fourth of the directors were from Massachusetts; but for the last twenty years they have all lived in Hartford. If the original proportion of directors from Massachusetts had been continued, more radical changes in its method of instruction would probably have been made.

The State of Massachusetts is represented in all other asylums and institutions which it supports or aids, and has also a visitorial power over all charitable or educational institutions in the State; but neither Massachusetts nor Connecticut has any representative in the Board of the American Asylum, nor any visitorial power over it.

Pupils were originally admitted to the Asylum at the age of fourteen; this was changed to twelve, and in 1843 they were allowed to enter when only eight years old. But parents are not advised to send children under ten or twelve years of age. (3) In March, 1867, twelve was the average age of pupils of the Junior Glass.

Five years has been the usual limit of the course of instruction, although always deemed too short a term.

In the European institutions children are admitted when they are from four to ten years of age, the average age of admission in all the institutions being seven years.

At Hartford, besides instruction in the ordinary branches of a common-school education, the boys are taught shoemaking, cabinet-making, and tailoring, and the girls sewing.

All other schools for deaf mutes in this country have been conducted on the same system as that pursued at Hartford, and most asylums in other States are taught by teachers who have been trained at Hartford, and who, with great fidelity, have carried on a uniform system of instruction. In 1860 there were in operation twenty-two institutions for the education of deaf mutes in the United States, and two more were about to be started, averaging one for each centre of a population equal to that of Massachusetts.

SIGN LANGUAGE.

There are various systems used in teaching deaf mutes, and the advocates of each claim for their own peculiar advantages. Each aims to teach the English language, and to give to the deaf mute a means of communication with those around him. The system used in our asylums is the French, and is a language of signs or pantomime, and is called by its teachers the natural language of the deaf mute. The manual alphabet, or the spelling of words upon the fingers, is used to some extent, but pantomime is the chief medium of communication. Another system discards all pantomime, and uses simply the manual alphabet, with or without reading from the lips. While a third, sometimes called the German system, uses only articulation, and reading from the lips, or the spoken word addressed to the eye instead of the ear.

The mental capacities of deaf mutes are naturally equal to those of other children; but it is the universal testimony of teachers that they have no innate ideas or sense of moral accountability; and that few enter school with any knowledge, save what they have obtained by observation.