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The idiom of the sign language is different from our own, or even the French, which it more nearly resembles; it is inverted, the subject is placed before the quality, the object before the action, and generally the thing modified before the modifier. This is the language used as a means of teaching the English language; the process of instruction is the old method employed in "teaching any child a foreign language by means of his previous acquaintance with his mother tongue." (16) Whether the end proposed is accomplished, a reference to the reports of the American Asylum and the New York Institution will show. "Pupils think in natural signs, and they converse among themselves by this means almost exclusively when left to their own choice." (17) "Both students at college and deaf mutes spend six or seven years in the study of languages which are not their vernacular tongue. The deaf mute acquires a better knowledge of the English than graduates of Latin and Greek." (18) "They are always foreigners among their own kindred and neighbors, nay, more than foreigners, for our speech is for them absolutely unattainable." (19) "They can only study written language as we do the foreign or dead languages, receiving instruction through their own vernacular of signs." (20) "There are few mutes deaf from birth, however well educated, who do not understand signs more easily and readily than writing, and find it more easy to communicate by signs than writing." (21) And in a letter recently received from Dr. Peet, the oldest as well as one of the ablest instructors of deaf mutes in this country, he says "congenital deaf mutes have no distinct mental ideas of spoken words, and do not use them in their private meditations as the direct object and machinery of thought." Says Professor Day: "I have met with two, and only two, deaf mutes who appeared to think as much as men ordinarily do in words. I have seen others in respect to whom it might possibly be true that they think nearly as much in words as in signs. The great mass, however, of even the most promising pupils think mainly, I am satisfied, in pantomimic signs, with at most only the incorporation of familiar words and phrases. The slowness with which they do it, and the fact that, when repeating a para graph from memory, they make a sign for every word, seems to forbid any other conclusion." (22)

(17) Twenty-Ninth Report American Asylum, for 1845, p. 59.

(18) Forty-Ninth Report American Asylum, for 1865, p. 18.

(19) Forty-Third Report New York Institution, for 1862, p. 24.

(20) Forty-Fourth Report New York Institution, for 1863, p. 26.

(21) Legal Rights, &c. of Deaf Mutes, by Dr. Peet, p. 28.

(22) First Report of Professor Day to the New York Institution, p. 194.

In order to obtain a more distinct idea of the value of these signs, and of the idioms of this language, we requested our friend Amos Smith, one of the most intelligent graduates of the Hartford Asylum, to give a literal translation of the signs used in the Lord's Prayer, which he did as follows: --

"Father your and mine Heaven; name thy hallowed; kingdom thy come, men and women all; will thy done, Angels obey people all like; day this, day every give bread, drink, clothes, things all; temptation we fall not; but devil bondage deliver; for kingdom thy, power thy, glory thy forever. Amen."

Mr. Smith has also kindly furnished us with Messrs. Smith and Chamberlain's translation of Deacon Packard's recitation: -

"Our Father Heaven, God, name thy hallowed, kingdom light come, angels obey law like done, now day bread, clothes food continually, forgive us trespasses as we forgive. Lead us temptation not, but deliver devil, for thy kingdom, thy power, thy glory, forever. Amen."

Professor Bartlett of the American Asylum gives us the following translation: --

"God, Father our -in- (23) Heaven, name thine hallowed -be-, kingdom thine come, will thine -be- obeyed -by- people -on- earth as -by- angels -in- Heaven. Day this, food and things needful give thou. We, commands thy transgress, forgive thou, others us offending we forgive in like manner. Us -into- temptation -to- fall permit thou not; but bondage, Satan deliver thou: for kingdom thine, power thine, glory thine, now and evermore. Amen."

To show the ability of the deaf mute to translate their vernacular into English, we copy a short passage given in the sign language to the highest class in the American Asylum, on the visit of a Committee of the Massachusetts Legislature,. on the education of deaf mutes, made February 13th, 1867, with their translation.

At the time of the visit made by the Committee the High, Class consisted of nine pupils, of whom four were from Massachusetts. Only three of the nine were born deaf, and of the six who once had the sense of hearing two became deaf at the age of twelve years or upwards, one at the age of nine, and one at the age of four years. Their average age was seventeen years; the average length of time they had been in the Asylum was five years, four months, and twenty days.