Excerpt from Report of the Proceedings of the Fifth Summer Meeting: Held at the Pennsylvania Institution for Deaf and Dumb, Mt; Airy, Philadelphia, Pa;, From July First to July Tenth, 1896, Some Notable Benefactors of the Deaf
It is eminently fitting, in this year of grace, 1896, - the one hundred and thirteenth since Francis Green began his agitation for the deaf of this country; the eighty-fourth since the establishment by Col. William Bolling of the first school for the deaf in America, at Cobbes, in Chesterfield County, Virginia; the seventy-ninth since Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc opened at Hartford, Connecticut, the celebrated American Asylum, - that we teachers of the deaf, in Summer Meeting assembled, should consider the work of these and a few other benefactors of the deaf in America. It is true that the teacher of the deaf has no thought of producing the poet, the scholar, or the inventor to hand down to future generations his fame or name. Of the teacher of the deaf it is never said that this or that man of eminence was his disciple. He must be content to remain unknown, rewarded only by the consciousness of having in an humble and unpretentious sphere liberated imprisoned minds and made them accessible to the truths of holy writ and to the elevating influence of literature, and thus in a measure realized the well known and oft repeated oriental legend which the poet has beautifully clothed in verse:
"Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increase,
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room
Making it rich and like a lilly in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in his room he said,
What writest thou? The vision raised its head
And in a voice made all of sweet accord,
Answered, the names of those who love the Lord.
And is mine one? asked Adhem. Nay, not so,
Replied the angel. Abou spake more low,
But cheerily still, I pray thee then
Write me as one who loved his fellow men.
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
He came again with a great awakening light
And showed the names of those whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem"s name led all the rest."
We may not claim for the teacher of the deaf the distinction of leading all the benefactors of his race in that he has the love of God above all others, but we may certainly claim that his beneficence stands forth the equal of others in self-denial and self-sacrifice.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Report of the Proceedings of the Fifth Summer Meeting (Philip G. Gillett)