!To THE EDITOR or Tan n SPECTATOR:I
SIR,—The letters of Mr. C. M. Paine and "Grateful " (Norember 10th and lish) deserve the attention of all thoughtful people. It is not generally recognized that the deaf, and even the partially deaf, are far more isolated from human sympathy and fellowship than the blind, whose appeal to the sympathies of even the most thoughtless is obvious. Very few people realize how bitterly the deaf feel their isolation, their needless isolation, from the world of kindly human intercourse. I have a deaf friend, a cultured and companionable man, who lives among his neighbours the life almost of a Trappist, because not one of them in a hundred will take the trouble to communicate with hint, Yet the remedy for this is so easy aa to
lie within the reach of every can sympathetic man and woman. The hand-alphabet can be learned in five minutes, and a fair degree of proficiency in its use can lie attained in an hour's practice. Yet how few people take the trouble to acquire this very !simple accomplishment ! Lip-reading, which can restore to a favoured few of the deaf some measure of the privilege of human fellowship, requires a tedious and costly education, and can only lie learned in youth; but if knowledge of the simple hand-alphabet became practically universal a world of kindly intercourse would he opened for numbers who are now imprisoned in the chill tomb of silence. I write this letter in the hope that it may induce all readers of the Spectator, and all thoughtful persons whom your readers can influence, to devote an hour to the acquisition of the hand-alphabet, and time place themselves in the position to extend to all deaf people the kindly balm of sympathy and fellowship.— I am, Sir, Sc.,
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