ernalia upon the blackboards. It was
a solemn scene, save for my own irrepressible laughter, which they
thought very unaccountable when they learned that I must suffer a like
fate. I explained as cheerfully as I could the delights of going to
heaven, whereupon one boy burst into tears, saying he did not want to
go to heaven: he would rather go home and see his mother.

One asked if we should go to heaven in the cars. I said I had been
told that we should go through the air, perhaps fly there. A little
girl immediately held up a wood-cut of a vulture, saying, "Ugly thing!
I don't want to be one." A boy whose new skates lay spoiling for the
ice in his trunk asked if he could skate there. Not having quite
the faith of the author of _Gates Ajar_, I could not answer "Yes"
unhesitatingly. A girl asked if fishes went to heaven. I answered
"No." "Where, then?" I replied that we ate the fishes, but was greatly
troubled afterward lest she should confound me with the question,
"What becomes of the snakes?"

In addition to the ordinary one-hand alphabet, the only one commonly
used by deaf mutes, there are five others. One of these is the
two-hand alphabet, sometimes used by hearing children at school. It is
clumsy and inconvenient, however. A second is made by the arms alone.
Still a third is formed by means of the body and arms also, in
various positions, to represent the different letters, and is used
in signaling at a distance. It is not often learned by deaf mutes,
however. A fourth is made entirely with the feet. But the most curious
of all is the facial or expression alphabet. Various emotions and
passions expressed on the face represent, by means of their initial
letters, the letters of the alphabet. Thus, A is indicated by an
expression of avarice, B by boldness, C by curiosity, D by devotion,
etc. This alphabet is sometimes so admirably rendered that words can
easily be spelled by means of it by the spectators.

Deaf mutes also excel in pantomime. A large amount of gesture and
pantomime is naturally employed in their conversation, and it thus
becomes easy to train them to perform pantomimic plays. I have seen
one young man, a deaf mute, whose narration in this manner of a hunter
who made a pair of buckskin breeches, hung them up during the summer,
drew them on when the rainy season came on, and found a hornet's nest
within, was interpreted amid roars of laughter. Thus told, it was far
more vivid than words could have po