But before they have learned to
understand in this way, and still more before they have learned to speak,
great patience is needed, both in teachers and children. I have heard that
in the schools where lip-reading is taught, the children are forbidden to
make signs to each other or talk on their fingers, and so some of them
learn this much better plan wonderfully quickly.
Sometimes children become deaf after a fever, sometimes from a fall or
a heavy blow, or from a fright; some are born so. I do not know how it
happened in the case of this boy whose story I want to tell you, because
the lady who has written an account of him never knew him till he was
eleven years old; but I think he must either have been born deaf, or have
lost his hearing when he was a baby, for he had never spoken a word, and up
to the time when his story begins he had never been taught anything. His
name was John Britt, but everybody called him Jack; not that it mattered
to him what, he was called, for he had never heard his own name, nor the
shouts of the boys with whom he played, nor the crowing of the cocks, as
they flapped their wings in his mother's yard; all the world was dumb and
silent to poor Jack.
When he first came to the house of the lady who was to be such a kind
friend to him, Jack looked a very stupid boy. I am sure he was shy too, for
he had never before been in any house but the poor little cottage where he
was born, or the cottages of the neighbour folk; and when this lady from
England tried to make him understand that she wanted to be friends with
him, he kept looking round at all the fine things in her drawing-room.
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