I am glad to tell you that a way has lately been found, by which children who have never heard a sound may be taught, not only to understand the speech of others, but to speak themselves. It is true that their talk sounds strange and unnatural, and is not easy to understand, but where this method is known it makes a wonderful difference in the lives of the poor children who have been so cut off from intercourse with others. By carefully watching the lips of their teachers, those who learn this "lip-reading" can tell what is said, and I have seen them write it down, just as you would write a dictation lesson; and quite as correct, though they only see the words, and you hear them. 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. Some people would have thought him a very rude boy, but she only watched him with pitying eyes, and longed to teach him about God. But how could she begin to teach him, since he could not hear a word she said?