USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Congress of Women : held in the Woman's building, World's Columbian exposition, Chicago, U.S.A., 1893 : with portraits, biographies and addresses > Part 60
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on their hands when they become of age, and so they must be trained and educated to bear these responsibilities. When I walked up Fifth avenue last Easter, after church, and met the crowd of fashionable people coming from their churches, I thought I had never seen so many bright, healthy looking, handsome women and girls as I saw in half-an-hour there, showing what can be done by proper culture, even amid all the unhealthy influences of city life; and, if such is the case, what might the boys and girls on the farms and in country homes do for themselves? While we are educating the physical, we must not forget the moral.
We have been told that the greatest virtues of the soul are hope, faith and char- ity. These are the higher virtues, but there are lower or more homely virtues, we may say, and we must commence with these, and the greatest of these, I think, are order and cleanliness. All reformers, all workers for the uplifting of the lower classes, have found this the first lesson to be taught. Ruskin says that "the essence of all vulgarity lies in the want of sensation;" and when we commence to cultivate the senses, refine- ment begins, and refinement is one of the attributes of soul culture, and out of soul culture and soul refinement grows spiritual culture and the Christian graces. So I say that order and neatness should be taught to every child. It should be a part of their school education, as, in many cases, it is not taught at home. I think it is even more necessary to teach it to the boys than to the girls, for, if boys were taught to keep their persons and surroundings clean, we should not have so much filth in public places, waiting-rooms, railroad cars, etc. If boys were taught to take a pail of water to their rooms and bathe themselves before going to bed, after working all day in the field or other dirty work, they would learn to look upon their bodies as something to be kept clean and pure; they would soon desire to have their surroundings cleaner; this would again have its influence upon them, and they would grow morally better and healthier, for, as I have said before, what elevates the body must elevate the soul. You know and I know of boys who have been ruined because the family have thought that any- thing and any place was good enough for the boys, until they thus grew away from refinement of the family circle, where they felt awkward and out of place, and sought more congenial companionship. Did you ever sit down to a breakfast-table where the linen was spotless, the coffee fragrant, the dishes nicely arranged, and other things in keeping? If you have, it has been in a refined family, for where artistic virtue has been cultivated you may be sure that others have been, for they are seldom found singly, and, moreover, I think we can usually tell, when we see the head of a house, even for a few minutes, what kind of a housekeeper she is, and what kind of a table she sets.
No one who has cultivated the virtues of cleanliness, the senses to admire music and other arts, the mind to refined and beautiful thoughts, would ever put before her- self, or anyone else, a disorderly table and ill-cooked food. In a very weak, and I think incorrect, article, which appeared in one of our leading magazines, the writer said: "We can get along without learned women, but we can not get along without wives and mothers." Now, I want to know if there is any vocation that calls for more learning than that of wives and mothers, particularly mothers What we want is more learned women among the mothers; for much of the neglect of which I have spoken is due to ignorance, and ignorance on most vital subjects. What we want are clubs, as widespread as the Chautauqua reading-clubs, devoted to subjects of physical and moral interest. There are some such clubs, called the "Young Mother's Clubs." I hope they may become numerous, more numerous than the ladies' whist clubs. There has been a great deal said about higher education unfitting a woman for her home duties. This is a mistake, for I tell you it is a positive fact that the best housekeep- ers and the best cooks are educated women; the poorest cooks and poorest house- keepers I have met have been women that knew nothing else; brought nothing from outside; and, having nothing else to do, it was a marvel that they did not learn how to do the one thing well. There is no broader sphere or higher sphere than woman's sphere, for its center is the hearthstone, its circumference eternity; but in some cases
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it is a very empty sphere. There is much to do to fill this vastness, and women are beginning to realize how much they are the great soul-educators, and that is what they are doing with their flower missions, their fruit missions, working girls' clubs, open- air funds, and all those things that are educating and refining the senses, and through them the soul, trying to open the eyes of the people to see some of the beauties of the world. What could you tell a child of the beauties of Paradise who has never seen a flower? But take the children from the slums of our cities out into a daisy field, and they will think they are surely in Heaven.
I have no sympathy with those who sing, " Earth is a desert drear, Heaven is my home." Earth is not a desert drear, unless you have pitched your tents in vacant lots; and if you have, plant some flowers around it; cultivate your surroundings, and when flowers bloom take them to those who have no flowers and teach them to cultivate them, and thus bring some beauty into their lives. If you live in a desert drear all your lives, do not imagine you will blossom out in the gardens of Paradise and feel at home there. Your soul would be so dried up that it would take all eternity to get it into condition to enjoy, or appreciate, even the beauties of Paradise. When you have cultivated your soul-nature so that it can look out and enjoy the beauties around us, and realize the possibilities of an earthly paradise, and also realize how much there is to do to help others toward this carthly perfection, then there will not be much time for complain- ing, nor will any dare to be idle. Woman must be the torch-bearer, and there are many dark places to be lighted, and I hope many that hear me will take up the work with new zeal, and that there may be more and more who will take up this work for the salvation of bodies and the elevating, purifying, and beautifying of the human racc.
THE NEXT STEP IN THE EDUCATION OF THE DEAF.
By MISS MARY S. GARRETT.
In past ages the deaf were the victims of deliberate as well as ignorant cruelty. In the present age they are no longer deliberately drowned, as in ancient Rome, nor exposed to die, as under the laws of Lycurgus, but they are still largely sufferers from a modified form of the ignorance which formerly ranked them with imbeciles, and now fails to realize that they are able to learn, be or do anything and everything the hear- ing can, if they are given precisely the same advan- tages and opportunities.
When a hearing baby is learning to talk the mother does not use motions to it, because it has not yet com- menced to understand the language; but she repeats over and over again to it the pet names she calls it, tells it again and again to say " papa " and "mamma," etc., until it learns to understand and then copy her words. She is keen to discover, encourage and correct its first attempts at articulation.
It has been proved by experience that if the atten- tion of the deaf child be directed to the mouth with the same persistency, and it be talked to just the same by every one who is with it, that it will learn the speech and language through the eye which the hear- ing child learns through the ear. Like the hearing MISS MARY S. GARRETT. child, it has an hereditary tendency to talk, and only needs the same opportunity to learn. No more motions should be used with it than with a hearing child; its attention should always be guided to the mouth of the speaker and concentrated there. Little by little it will begin to attach meaning to the words and sentences it " sees," just as the hearing child, little by little, begins to attach meaning to the words and sentences that it hears. People almost universally, when they wish to take an infant from its mother, hold out their arms and say " come," watching the little one for an indication in its face that it desires to be taken, or to see if it will hold out its arms to come. Thus the little child learns the meaning of the word " come," but as it grows older the parents or others simply call it to come, without holding out the arms, dropping the motion as soon as the child understands the meaning of the word. No more motions should be used with a deaf child than this, which amounts simply to employing the action representing the word. The words should be indefinitely repeated, that the child may become familiar with the looks of the mouth, while the representation of a word by action or motion should be dropped as soon as possible, and should never be used without at the same time showing the child the word represented. The names of objects may be taught with the objects, which is really the way hearing children learn them in their homes. We
Miss Mary S. Garrett is a native of Philadelphia, Pa. She was born June 20, 1839. Her parents were Henry Garrett and Carolina Rush Garrett. She was educated in Philadelphia, and has traveled considerably in Europe and the United States. Her special work has been in the interest of restoring the deaf to society by teaching them articulate speech and speech read- ing through the eye. Her literary papers are " Directions to Parents of Deaf Children for their Treatment from Infancy in order that they may Learn Speech and Lip Reading; " "What You can Do to Help Children to Speak and Read the Lips,"' and other writings on kindred topics. In religious faith she is a liberal Quaker. Her postoffice address is Belmont and Monument Avenues, Philadelphia, Pa.
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must always remember that when a hearing child is learning to talk, its hearing gives it the advantage of every word spoken in its presence, while the deaf child has only the advantage of seeing the mouth of the person it happens to be looking at, or who is talking with it, and this difference must be made up to the deat child by a greater amount of repetition of the words we are teaching it.
Everyone with whom a deaf child comes in contact should talk to it and encour- age it and aid it to articulate. A deaf baby begins to say " ma, ma, ma," just as hearing babies do, but as a rule it is not encouraged; if it were, and the child perfectly guided to further articulation, it would talk. The ordinary practice, however, when an infant is discovered to be deaf, is to make no further effort to teach it to talk or read the lips, but to immediately begin to use motions with it. Just here begins the cruel sys- tem of training the deaf differently from the hearing, and thus making them feel from the very outset of life that they are peculiarly unlike those around them. The truth is, that it is this faulty system of training that makes them different by depriving them of the free and constant communication with other minds which the hearing have. No wonder they have come to have the reputation of being naturally jealous, suspicious and unhappy-an unjust reputation.
There is also a popular delusion that the vocal chords of deaf children are defect- ive; the fact is, that such cases are the exception, and that the vocal chords of deaf children generally are normal. The articulation of certain consonant sounds depends on certain positions of the lips, tongue and teeth and palate. The quality of vowel sounds depends on certain positions of the tongue. Any deaf child who can cry and scream, and who has tongue, teeth, lips and palate, has the necessary vocal organs.
I know of three mothers who were fortunate enough to realize what they could accomplish for their deaf infants, and who, following the stated plan, have taught them to read the lips so well, and also to talk, that now that these children are grown up, no one would take them to be stone deaf. They are all women; two of them have married hearing men, and the third is a bright, happy girl of twenty-one, who is study- ing art in Chicago, on exactly the same footing with the hearing, having previously graduated at the High School in Chicago.
Although the deaf have been taught to talk in the schools of Germany for more than a century, and in the schools of Italy, Holland and Switzerland for more than a generation, and England, France and America arc slowly adopting the oral method in the schools, the pupil can never make up the loss of the years before the school age, any more than hearing children could if they were deprived of all knowledge of speech and language until they are sent to school.
The next step in the education of the deaf, then, is to give every deaf child the same opportunities for learning speech and language at the natural age as the success- ful mothers already referred to gave their children. Not only the mothers, but the public, have a share in this work; as every one who has anything to do with the chil- dren should adopt the same policy with all the deaf. Until society learns that, by thus doing its whole duty to the deaf, they will become like normal people, we shall need efficiently and intelligently conducted " homes" for the training in speech of deaf children. At present there are only two or three private homes and home schools where the work is being done, and Pennsylvania leads the world in a government appropriation to this end. From June 1, 1893, it gives state aid to the " Home for Training in Speech of Deaf Children before School Age," established at Belmont and Monument Avenues, Philadelphia, by my sister, Miss Emma Garrett, on February I, 1892, and maintained from that time to June 1, 1893, by funds raised privately by our- selves.
Children are admitted between the ages of two and eight, and are given a six- years' course from time of entrance, uninterrupted by vacations, although parents are allowed to visit them when they please. The reason for giving them no vacation is that when hearing children are learning to talk there is no interruption to the process, and there should be none in the cases of deaf children. During the courses they are
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taught the speech and language which will fit them in most cases to attend schools for the hearing, and in all cases bring them into communication with others more freely than is possible in any other way. The home is on the cottage plan, and the children live a perfectly natural home life in every respect. It is amazing to notice how soon they realize that they are being made like other people, and their faces grow happier and brighter all the while as they advance. Similar homes should be estab- lished everywhere where there are deaf children who need them.
N. B .- I have quoted in above address somewhat from my paper, " Directions to Parents of Deaf Children for their Treatment from Infancy, in Order that They may Learn Speech and Lip-Reading," read before the Medical Society of France in 1886, and published in the " Medical and Surgical Reporter " of June 12, 1886.
HIGHER LESSONS OF THE WORLD'S FAIR .* By MRS. LUCINDA H. STONE.
"Because the soul is progressive," says Emerson, "it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a fairer whole."
We have here the very essence of Darwinian evolution, and yet these words are older by far than Darwin's enunciation of his discoveries, through which he dethroned the old gods of the six days' creation out of nothing. We have within the enclos- ure of Jackson park, the results of discoveries in science, made mostly since Darwin's time even, as much greater than the discoveries of Columbus which has created this wonderful fair, as the thoughts of men are wider than the field which those walls encom- pass. The unlimited possibilities of man, then, and the wonderful rapidity of his successive discoveries of these possibilities, is the first great lesson I read on entering its gates. Above them one might like to find an inscription befitting our times, similar to those apophthegms formerly inscribed above the doors of entrance to the old astrological towers of the days of Columbus.
Over one such tower, erected by Catherine de' Medici in the old city of Blois, in France, there still remains the inscription "Sacred to Urania," or wis- MRS. LUCINDA H. STONE. dom which Urania (or the stars ) could communicate. In a communication here made, as this queen interpreted it, the stars counseled the massacre of St. Bartholomew with all its horrors. Above our gates, marking the difference between that age and this, we would inscribe today: "Sacred to the highest truth, that man, by his own God-aided search, has discovered and made con- secrate to the higher, broader education of every man and woman who may enter therein." This, I believe is the divine purpose, of this world's university, opened in this year 1893, and such in effect, I believe, it will prove. Significant and prophetic of this is the inscription over the peristyle, leading into the court from which all this architectural grandeur and beauty seem to radiate, as from the heart of the whole park: " And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
Freedom through truth is, then, the purpose, the pulse, the heart-beat of this World's Fair. When I, for the first time, looked up, and almost under the shadowing arms of that magnificent figure, that wondrous creation of grace, beauty and majesty, the symbol of our republic, holding aloft the emblems of liberty and seeming to wel- come the nations to her noble peace banquet, my heart responded to the inscription
Mrs. Lucinda H. Stone is a native of Hinesburgh, Vt. She was born September 30, 1814. Her parents were Aaron Hinsdale and Lucinda Mitchell Hinsdale. She was educated at Hinesburgh Academy and in the Female Seminaries of Middlebury and Burlington, Vt. She has traveled extensively in Enrope and in Egypt and some parts of Asia. She married Rev. James A. B. Stone, for twenty years president of Kalamazoo College. Mrs. Stone has been for twenty years principal of the ladies department of Kalamazoo College, and she is also a journalist of note. Has published many letters from Enrope and Egypt and Palestine. She was the first American woman to take young ladies abroad for educational travel, and was one of the pioneer organizers of literary clubs. Her postoffice address is Kalamazoo, Mich.
*The article here appearing consists of extracts from an address under the title "Some of the Lessons of the World's Fair."
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and I could but voice what I felt: "Oh sing unto the Lord a new song, for he hath triumphed gloriously." And these are the triumphs of peace, not war; and when that magnificent band under the flooding radiance of the great search light, struck up the music to which is set that glorious hymn, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by a woman, my heart and soul sang as never before:
"Mine eyes have seen the glory Of the coming of the Lord. Our God is marching on."
"How far that little candle casts its beams!" Shakespeare makes Portia exclaim, when she sees the light of a candle, the only light for the palaces of kings in her day, gleam from the window of her home, which she is approaching. And, quick as thought and apt as it is beautiful is the suggestion that comes to her woman's soul, of the higher, the spiritual, reach of the same law, eliciting the instant exclamation: "So is a good deed in a naughty world."
What diviner sermon was ever preached than is preached from this text furnished by the poet, in those great searchlights mounted on the four corners of yonder Manufactures Building, in which, they tell us, that one little candle's light is, through the aid of discoveries, made in science and invention, increased in power to the light of two hundred million candles such as called forth the enthusiastic exclamation of Portia; and when we remember that this wonderful invention origi- nated in the old city of Nuremburg, where the deepest dungeons, the darkest and foulest prisons, and the most terrible engines for human torture that man ever invented, yet remain to bear witness to what was yet called Christian in that age, is all the more striking and should raise our jubilee in this Fair to its fullest chorus, in which every voice should join. And a future, a future of which this invention and this whole Exposition is a suggestion-more, a promise-dazes the most advanced ideal- ist. Truly, " what we shall be, doth not yet appear." But, thanks to another kind of searchlight that is illuminating the world-that indicated in the motto chosen by the women of this board of managers for their auxiliary congresses: "Not matter, but mind"-thanks to this spirit in the world which has created a World's Fair, this illuminator for a new era.
In the olden time men could have seen in the face of every stranger whom we welcome to our Midway Plaisance, an enemy to be met with an armed defense against himself, his customs, his thought, and above all against his religion. Now, thanks to the new spirit of our times, we see in him a human brother from whom, though we may differ, with whom we may yet agree in broad human sympathies, and who has the same claim to the fatherhood of God as we have. The noblest art of this Expo- sition even, and its mission to our age, will be better understood by men and women yet to come. This exposition is to be, I believe, the educator of a broader man than has yet been. Fair as is the infinitude of these parts, a fairer whole in a higher moral and spiritual sphere is to grow out of them.
I am reminded of Byron's first visit to St. Peter's church in Rome, and his famed apostrophe to it, which, mighty structure as it is, could yet be put in a corner, or form a bay window to our great Liberal Arts Building. "Enter," exclaims the poet.
"Its grandeur overwhelms thee not. And why? It is not lessened;
But thy mind, expanded by the genius of the spot, has grown colossal."
In this one word, expanded, or expansion, is best expressed the education which this World's Fair is destined to give the world. It is to be the starting point of new ideas.
It is a new revelation of man to himself that most astonishes. Who thought out this combination of such an infinitude of parts touching, especially in its auxiliary congresses, not only material things, but the niental and moral spheres of life? Those searchlights are not mounted to penetrate every nook and cranny of the fair grounds only, not every dark alley of the city of Chicago even, but they hint an illuminated
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search into the dark alleys of the moral, ethical and religious world; into all the varied słums of human thought; they hint, in short, at a new civilization, a new man.
Great art is moral and religious in its teachings and has ever been. Beethoven said: "All genuine invention is a moral progress." What we acquire through art is from God, a divine suggestion that sets up a goal for human capacities which the spirit attains. He said also: "We do not know what grants us our knowledge. The firmly enclosed seed needs the moist, warm, electric soil to grow, think, express itself." Why, my friends, it is an education to walk through these grounds, among these columns, to pass under these domes, an education which we cannot estimate. It iniposes a quietude, a courtesy, a gentle awe of which we do not know the meaning. We feel it, that is all. We bear away a new sense of humanity, of the brotherhood of man, that we never felt before. These grounds are the birthplace of a new democracy, of a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the first principles of our declaration of inde- pendence, I believe, than anything that has gone before has given us. The "self evident truth that all men are created free and equal, with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness " here takes on a new meaning, assumes a farther reach. Caste, cannot live here.
My friends, in looking over this wondrous Exposition, the marvelous achieve- ments of the arts and inventiveness of man, a new light has seemed to come upon this lesson of the old Sphinx, as good for our day as it was for the pre-Adamites; as good in science as in art, and the same in both as in morals and religion. There is but one law.
Was there ever such a pæan, such a divine symphony of art and science, intoning through ten thousand times ten thousand voices, this inspired psalm of the old Sphinx as this World's Fair? " There shall never be one lost good or one lost truth." Never have I felt such exultation as here-that a new heaven and a new earth await us, when the knowledge that has been grasped by science shall be realized as a whole, related to that which is within us as to that which is external to us-that there is but one law. Surely the philosopher's stone is found here? The lesson comes to us like the sound of many waters in the buzz and hum and roar from Machinery Hall, the Electrical and Manu- factures Building, revealing to us that human possibilities undreamed of, until within the last quarter, or the last decade of our century, are in us all, and forces of nature, hitherto undreamed of, are subject to man's knowledge and in his control, impressing upon us as nothing else ever did, that, "verily the Highest dwells in us" and "that we are gods but in the germ." As I read the lessons of this Fair which has brought all nations together as never before; there has never in the world's history been taken a more important step toward effecting this, or bringing about this time, than was taken in the organization of this World's Fair with its Auxiliary Congresses Truly in this,
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