A REMARKABLE EXHIBITION.

Evening Star, Issue 3500, 12 May 1874, Page 3

A REMARKABLE EXHIBITION.

A very remarkable exhibition recently took place in New York, at a festival given to celebrate'the eiglityseventh anniversary of the birthday of 'i hos. Hopkins Gallauclet, the initiator ef the system of deaf mute instruction. The participants were deaf mutes, and orations were made without a sound being uttered, and were loudly applauded by an audience who could neither hear nor speak. The speeches were followed by dancing, the dancers keeping excellent time, though for them the music of Godfrey and Strauss had no charms. The ‘New York World.’ in describing the entertainment, says : —“Waltz followed waltz, quadrille followed quadrille, and a programme containing twenty-eight dances was put through before ‘ Home, sweet Home ’ sounded on ears that could not hear its strains. It was a curious sight to see, during the pauses in the music, the army of dancers falling in quadrille phalanxes, everyone freely gesticulating, and yet no speech falling from their lips, and the only sound heard being the scuffling of the feet on the floor, which, as might have been expected, was rather louder in the ball-room where the dancers were not deaf. But more curious still was it to reflect, when half a hundred or more couples were whirling around in almost perfect accord to one of Strauss’s waltzes, that hardly one of them heard a single strain of music to which they were capering so nimbly. There was some hesitation perceptible at starting, but few mistakes were - made after the time had once been obtained by watching the others, and the vibration of the floor had been caught. Flirtatious went on, too, as at ordinary balls ; but the demoiselles used their fingers to talk with. From their being absorbed in watching each other’s motions, and not hearing the noise of the footsteps of those approaching, collisions constantly occurred, but no more perhaps that at the bails where the average awkward man is present. Altogether the affair was as successful as it was unique.”