President.-EDWARD M. GALLAUDET, Ph. D. Instructor in Articulation.-MARY T. G. GORLL. D.

DOMESTIC DEPARTMENT.

REPORT.

COLUMBIA INSTITUTION FOR THE DEAF AND DUMB,

Kendall Green, near Washington, D. C., October 31, 1882. SIR: In compliance with the acts of Congress making provision for the support of this institution, we have the honor to report its progress during the year ending June 30, 1882:

The pupils remaining in the institution on the 1st of July, 1881, numbered.............. Admitted during the year..

Since admitted..

Total.....

111

Under instruction since July 1, 1881: Males, 94; females, 17. Of these 51 have been in the collegiate department, representing 20 States and the Federal district, and 60 in the primary department. A list of the names of the pupils connected with the institution since July 1, 1881, will be found appended to this report.

HEALTH OF THE INSTITUTION.

General good health has prevailed in the institution since the date of our last report. A case of scarlet fever made its appearance during the month of May in the family of one of our instructors residing in the institution. The child, with its mother, was promptly removed from the building, and no spread of the disease followed.

The prevalence of small-pox in parts of the country not far from Washington suggested the desirableness of a general vaccination of the residents of Kendall Green. Vaccine matter was procured from Z. D. Gilman, of Washington, prepared by Drs. Robbins and Lewis, Brooklyn, N. Y., and applied to more than one hundred persons. In only one case did the operation prove successful.

Application was then made to Dr. Ralph Walsh, of Washington, for matter from his vaccine farm in the vicinity of the city. The same persons were again operated upon, and with scarely an exception complete vaccination was the result.

One pupil only, Miss Alice Turner, has died since the date of our last report. Miss Turner had been connected with our primary department for four years, and was a young woman of quick mind and irreproach able character. Her death, which occurred at her home just at the close of our school year, was caused by pulmonary consumption.

DEATH OF MISS ANNA A. PRATT.

We are also called to mourn the loss of one who had filled an important position in the institution for many years, and who was greatly he loved by both pupils and officers.

On the 9th day of March last Miss Anna A. Pratt, for fourteen years matron of this institution, ended her earthly labors after a short illness. Her health had been feeble for more than a year, and but a few weeks

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before her death she tendered her resignation, feeling that she was no longer able properly to discharge her duties. But her services were so highly regarded that her resignation was not accepted, and an arrangement was made for a considerable reduction of her responsibilities and cares, in the hope that with rest her strength might be restored. It was soon apparent, however, that her constitution was hopelessly undermined, and she sank rapidly from what seemed at first a light attack of catarrhal pneumonia. To all who came under her care Miss Pratt was a true mother. Pupils and officers looked to her as such, and appealed to her in any emergency, sure of being met with that kindly interest and sympathy which can only come from the maternal heart. And it was not at moments of unusual need alone that her motherly care was manifested, but at all times as the movement of domestic life of Kendall Green went on was her influence felt. No one can ever surpass Miss Pratt in conscientious devotion to duty; no one can ever fill more successfully than she did the arduous and delicate position she was called upon to occupy. Her record is complete, and she will ever be remembered by those who knew her as one deserving of their highest respect and warmest affection.

The position made vacant by the death of Miss Pratt has been filled by the appointment of Miss Ellen Gordon, lately of Exeter, N. H., and the ability shown by her during the few months she has acted as matron give excellent promise of success in the future.

COURSES OF INSTRUCTION.

The work of instruction in the several departments of the institution has proceeded with no essential changes. The number of pupils taught articulation has been increased, and the result of this branch of instruction has been encouraging.

Classes in drawing have been taught in the college and in the primary department by Mr. Arthur D. Bryant, a graduate of the college in 1880. Mr. Bryant's methods have proved eminently successful, and the progress made by the pupils has been in every respect satisfactory.

PHYSICAL TRAINING.

The results growing out of the work done in our new gymnasium have been most gratifying, whether they are regarded from a moral or a physical point of view. The morale of the institution was never as high as during the past year.

The instances where discipline became necessary have been very few as compared with former years, and the reactive effects of an improved physique on the mental and moral faculties has been markedly favor able in many instances.

During the six months from November 1 to May 1, all the students of the college and the older boys from the primary school were required to spend four hours a week in active gymnastic exercises, viz, an hour on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of each week. These exercises consisted of dumb-bell practice, in concert, intended to open the lungs, stir the blood, and set in motion the whole body, and in the development of special muscles by the use of a number of inge niously-prepared machines, designed and furnished by Dr. D. A. Sargent, the director of the gymnasium of Harvard University.

The dumb-bell exercise was acquired with great readiness, and given

with precision, the idea of rhythm and time in marching being conveyed by the assistance of drum beats.

The great benefit arising from the use of the special apparatus has been clearly shown in the uniform increase of chest girths, arm girths, &c., in the erect carriage and springy step of the students, and above all in the desire for regular exercise, as shown in their work on days when the exercise was not compulsory.

The physique of each student was carefully recorded in a series of forty-two measurements taken at the beginning and again at the end of the season. The average chest girth of about fifty young men showed the following gains:

Inflated

Repose

The measurements given are decimals of a meter.
The greatest gain in chest girth was:

Inflated

Repose...

November. May.

.897 .91 .853 .864

November. May.

.890 .972

.855 .910

Some interesting cases occurred of the development of limbs into symmetrical proportions where marked discrepancies existed when the first measurements were taken.

A single illustration will be sufficient:

It was on the 23d of February, 1857, that the act of Congress incorporating the institution was accepted and made the basis of their organization by the board of directors. The recurrence of the twenty-fifth an niversary of that day was deemed a fitting occasion on which to invite the President and other prominent officers of the Government of the United States to visit the institution and see something of its workings. In response to invitations, the President of the United States, the acting Vice-President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Secretaries of State and War, the Attorney-General, the Postmaster-General, the chairmen and sev eral members of the Committees on Appropriation, the Comptroller and First Auditor of the Treasury, with ladies accompanying them, spent the evening of February 23d last at the institution. They were received by the president and directors of the institution and its officers, in the gymnasium, where an exhibition of athletic exercises was given. The company then passed through the college building to the chapel. where the pupils of the primary departments and the students of the college gave evidence in various exhibitions of the attainments they had made. The exercises were concluded with a pantomime which had been prepared by one of the students of the college, and was given by sev eral of the young men. The visitors expressed great delight and sur prise at the progress which had been made by the pupils and students.

EXERCISES OF PRESENTATION DAY.

The exercises of the regular public anniversary of the college took place on the 3d day of May. In the absence of the President of the United States, ex-officio patron of the institution, the Speaker of the House, Hon. J. W. Keifer, called the assembly to order. Expressing his hearty interest in the institution and his regret that he would not be able to remain through the exercises, Speaker Keifer, in a few felicitously-chosen words, invited Hon. George Bancroft, the eminent historian, to take the chair. The exercises were then opened with prayer by Rev. William A. Leonard, D. D., rector of Saint John's church. The candidates for degrees presented essays as follows:

Dissertation-Liberty and Law. Edward Louis Van Damme, Mich

igan.

Oration-Progress of Agriculture. Lars Larson, Wisconsin.

Dissertation-Grecian Art in the time of Pericles. John Gordon Sax. ton, New York.

Dissertation-Was America discovered by the Northmen? George Layton, West Virginia.

Oration-The Scientific Achievements of Faraday. George Thomas Dougherty, Missouri.

Oration-Monuments. Robert Middleton Zeigler, Pennsylvania. Oration-Contributions from the New World to the Old. Thomas Hines Coleman, South Carolina.

Messrs. Coleman, Zeigler, Larson, and Van Damme were then presented by the president of the college to the board of directors as candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and Messrs. Dougherty, Layton, and Saxton for the degree of Bachelor of Science.

The honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred on Lars A. Havstad, of Christiania, Norway, a deaf-mute, who had made unusual acquisitions in science and letters.

Rev. William C. Cattell, D. D., LL. D., president of Lafayette College, then delivered the following address on—

A LIBERAL EDUCATION.

The National College for Deaf-Mutes has a deeper significance than other philanthropic institutions founded to ameliorate the condition of those deprived of hearing and speech. Any institution with this general aim would indeed enlist our profoundest sympathy; for our hearts go out in tender and loving interest towards those brothers and sisters of ours who are deaf or blind-in our Father's house they seem so near to us and they are so far away, in their rayless or silent land, from the high privileges of our common home. And we not only admire and applaud the private philanthropy that holds forth to them its helping hand, but likewise all well directed appropriations for their benefit from the public funds; men who most critically examine the legality and exediency of appropriations from the public treasury-State or national-as they read these appropriations for the blind or the deaf, find their hearts beating faster with generous delight.

But "The National Deaf-Mute College," organized in 1864, mens something more than "The Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb,” previously established, or any similar institution having in view the general philanthropic object to better their condition. The distinct and definite aim of every college is to afford liberal culture; and while the establishment of this college by Congress emphasizes the value our national legislature places upon those liberal studies which lead to academic degrees, it marks also a great and important advance in the education provided for deaf-mutes, an advance not only in degree, but in kind. These noble buildings, all this generous scientific equipment, this large faculty of able and distinguished scholars-all this assures us not only of the increased thoroughness and breadth, and efficiency of the special instruction here given to the deaf-mute; but also that, in its enlarged range of instruction, are now included those liberal studies which have for generations attracted the aspiring scholar to the academic groves of Harvard and Yale.