Articulation is also exceedingly trying to the unused or long-disused throat and lungs.  In this the teachers are likewise sufferers.  The tax upon the vocal organs is necessarily much greater than that in ordinary speaking schools.  But the disuse of the vocal organs in articulate speech does not indicate that they are wholly unused.  A lady visiting an institution for the deaf and dumb a few years ago poetically called the pupils the “children of silence.”  Considering the tremendous volume of noise they are able to keep up with both feet and throat, the title is amusingly inappropriate.  A deaf-and-dumb institution is the noisiest place in the world.

In summing up the results usually attained, let no discontented taxpayer grumble at the large outlays annually made in behalf of the deaf and dumb.  If they learned absolutely nothing in the school-room, the intelligence they gain by contact with each other, by the lectures in signs, by intercourse with teachers, and the regular and systematic physical habits acquired, are of untold value.  Add to this a tolerable acquaintance with the common English branches, such as reading, writing, arithmetic—­one of their most useful acquirements—­geography and history, and we have an amount of education which is of incalculable value.

JENNIE EGGLESTON ZIMMERMAN.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CITY OF VIOLETS.

Wartburg, with its pleasant memories of delightful excursions during the previous summer, was covered with snow, as if buried in slumber, when I dashed past it on the 25th of March.  A gray mantle of mist obscured the sky, and by all the roadsides stood bushes loaded with green buds shivering in the frosty air.  The exquisite landscape, which I had last seen glowing with such brilliant hues, now appeared robed in one monotonous tint of gray, and the ancient towers and pointed roofs of Weimar loomed with a melancholy aspect through the dense fog.  Only the welcome of my faithful friends, Gerhard Rohlfs and his pretty, fair-haired wife, was blithe and gay.  The brave desert wanderer and bird of passage has now built himself a little wigwam or nest near the railway-station:  the grand duke of Weimar gave him for the purpose a charming piece of ground with a delightful view.  On the 25th of March a light veil of snow still rested on the ground, but two days later we were listening to the notes of the lark and gathering violets to take to Schiller’s house and adorn the table of the beloved singer.  Everything was illumined by the brilliant sunlight—­the narrow bedstead on which he died, and all the numerous withered laurel-wreaths and bouquets of flowers that filled it—­while outside, in Schiller’s little garden, in the bed where his bust is placed, violets nodded at us between the leaves of the luxuriant ivy.