Library Collections: Document: Full Text

l6th. I sent for Mr. Lee, the Second Auditor of the Treasury, and spoke with him of the question upon the settlement of the accounts of Simeon Knight, heretofore a paymaster in the army. He claims pay till January, 1822, four years from the date of his commission, upon the ground that he was not dismissed from his office; but Mr. Lee says he believes he was, and that another was appointed in his place. I told Mr. Lee that in that event the allowance of his pay could not be made. It appears that the practice has constantly been of leaving the dismission of officers by the President of the United States without record signed by him. The order has been verbally given, and notified to the individual dismissed by letter from the head of the Department under which he served; sometimes, as in the case of Satterlee Clark, only from a subaltern, and, if Lee's belief is correct, in this case of Simeon Knight not at all. The only evidence of his dismission will be the appointment of another paymaster, without even saying "in his place." Mr. Lee brought with him and showed me a statement made at his office to be exhibited to the Retrenchment Committee, showing the multiplicity of business with which it has been and is charged. All the offices are equally occupied.

This day at one o'clock had been appointed for the Cabinet meeting upon the letter from the Governor of Georgia with the Cherokee Constitution. But the House of Representatives adjourned over from yesterday till next Monday, to allow the use of the hall this day for the exhibition of the deaf and dumb teachers and pupils. I learnt the fact this morning from Mr. John Taliaferro, whom I fell in with on my walk, accompanying his brother to Brown's Hotel, whence he was going to take passage in the steam boat for Virginia. I met also in this walk Mr. Barney and Mr. Dorsey, members of the House from Maryland. I shortened this walk, and at noon walked to the Capitol, leaving directions at home that if the members of the Administration should come at one, to ask them to wait a short time for my return from the Capitol, and ordered my carriage to be there for me at one. I found at the Capitol Mr. Weld delivering in the House of Representatives an address recommendatory of the institutions for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, which he soon closed, and then began the performances of his three pupils. Their language of gesticulation is twofold: one consists of spelling words, each letter of the alphabet being marked by the sign of a distinct collocation of the fingers; the other is by motion of the arms and hands, and of the whole body, and by significant expressions of the countenance; it is altogether pantomimic. By spelling the letters they read and write, and thus they identify words. But it is through the pantomime only that they understand the meaning of their discourse, and two of them in writing a sentence occasionally used different words. Their writing is, in this respect, a translation of the discourse delivered by gesticulation, and different translators use different words to convey the same thought. Besides the examination which they underwent from their teacher, Mr. Weld, and from Mr. Gallaudet, principal of the original institution at Hartford, Connecticut, several of the spectators, at the request of Mr. Weld, joined in the examination and put questions to the pupils, which they answered with as much acuteness and propriety as could be expected from youths of their age possessed of all their senses. But, as the questions put by the spectators were upon objects not within the ordinary routine of their studies, there was not quite the same promptitude or accuracy in their answers to them as when responding to their own instructors.

Vice-President Calhoun asked them what was the difference between power and right. They gave definitions, but without point. They did not suspect what was running in Mr. Calhoun's head when he put the question. They had not read the debate on the rules of the Senate, and did not know that right was a President of a deliberative assembly without power to call to order for words spoken in debate. Mr. Speaker Stevenson asked them who had given the world the greatest example of true glory. Only one of them attempted to answer this question, and he was sadly perplexed. He first answered, God, by giving the gospel. He was told the question referred to human beings; he then wrote, Moses. Finding this did not yet answer, he successively wrote, perhaps Bonaparte, perhaps Washington. This name without the perhaps was that which I suppose the Speaker had intended to elicit. Mr. Weld, to illustrate the method of teaching them abstract words and ideas, wrote the word irrefragable, the use of which, he said, was unknown to them, and which, upon his enquiring of them, they signified that they did not understand. He taught them the meaning of it, so that they wrote sentences in which the word was properly introduced. I asked Mr. Gallaudet if he could make them understand the difference between irrefragable and incontrovertible. He said he could not immediately discern the distinction between them himself. I said irrefragable was that which could not be refuted; incontrovertible was that which could not even be contested. He then taught them the difference between the words, of which they wrote distinct definitions. I desired the question to be put to them if they knew the figure over the clock in the hall; but they did not. Afterwards I enquired if they could tell the name of the Muse of History. One of them said he had forgotten it; but the question still did not suggest to him that it was the figure over the clock. I asked Mr. Weld if he could make them write the line,

"Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers."

He told me the only word in the line he should spell to them by letters on the fingers was lonely. The eldest pupil wrote the line, Hark! a glad voice the lonely desolation cheers. The youngest boy wrote it, Hark! a glad voice a lonely desert cheers. One of them was asked to write the names of several distinguished men of ancient and modern times, and of the four quarters of the globe; which he did. The spectators were requested to name any one of them for a brief biography. I named Plato; and the pupil immediately wrote down a short account of his life, death, and writings. One of them wrote down an abstract of a conversation he had yesterday had -sic- with Mr. Gallaudet on the subject of Rousseau of Geneva. The boy, at the request of a lady, told a story of a clergyman mocked and mimicked, while preaching, by his monkey perched on the canopy over his head, to the inextinguishable laughter of his auditory. There was a boy from Alexandria, about fifteen, entirely untaught, with whom Mr. Weld held some conversation, mutually intelligible between him and the boy. He says there is a great resemblance between the gestures of all the uninstructed deaf and dumb. He says also that throughout the country the proportion of deaf and dumb to the whole population is about one to two thousand persons -- about six thousand in the United States.

This exercise lasted about three hours, and when I came home I found Mr. Clay, Governor Barbour, and Mr. Southard had been here and were gone -- Governor Barbour after waiting some time. Mr. Wirt came afterwards, and I had a very long conversation with him about the Cherokee Constitution and the Indian titles to lands. He seems not to have considered thoroughly the nature of the Indian title, and to suppose that it is a permanent possession of the soil, like that of the white people.

17th. Heard at the Capitol Mr. Gallaudet from Romans xv. 21: "But as it is written. To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand." It is a part of the chapter in which St. Paul declares himself peculiarly the apostle of the Gentiles; and Mr. Gallaudet, in the application of his discourse, considered the deaf and dumb as Gentiles of our own age and country. The sermon, written in unambitious style, was fervent in manner and cogent in reasoning. The forlorn and pitiable condition of the deaf and dumb without instruction, and the world of thought, of knowledge, and of enjoyment created for them by teaching, were contrasted without elaborate study for effect, but by reference to his own experience in the progress of educating them. He dwelt especially, and with power, upon the blessing imparted to them in the ideas of a Supreme Creator, of their own immortality, and of the hopes and promises of the gospel. The hall was well filled, but not crowded, and the sermon was listened to with deep attention. Mr. Gallaudet is the first founder of the schools for deaf and dumb in this country, and may, without imputation of arrogance, compare his own condition and Services to his fellow-mortals with those of the apostle of the Gentiles.