cessful attempts to say, " he," " that." The deaf-and-dumb
child's way of asking, "Who has beaten you?" would be,
" You beaten ; who was it ? " Though it is possible to render
a great mass of simple statements or questions, almost gesture
for word, the concretism of thought which belongs to the deaf-
mute whose mind has not been much developed by the use of
written language, and even to the educated one when he is
thinking and uttering his thoughts in his native signs, com-
monly requires more complex phrases to be re-cast. A ques-
tion so common amongst us as, " What is the matter with
you ? " would be put, " You crying ? you been beaten ? " and so
on. The deaf-and-dumb child does not ask, " What did you
have for dinner yesterday ? " but " Did you have soup ? did you
have porridge ? " and so forth. A conjunctive sentence he ex-
presses by an alternative or contrast ; "I should be punished
if I were lazy and naughty," would be put, " I lazy, naughty,
no ! — lazy, naughty, I punished, yes ! " Obligation may be
expressed in a similar way; "I must love and honour my
teacher," may be put, "teacher, I beat, deceive, scold, no ! — I
love, honour, yes ! " As Steinthal says in his admirable essay,
it is only the certainty which speech gives to a man's mind in
holding fast ideas in all their relations, which brings him to the
shorter course of expressing only the positive side of the idea,
and dropping the negative. 1

What is expressed by the genitive case, or a corresponding
preposition, may have a distinct sign of holding in the gesture-
language. The three signs to express "the gardener's knife,"
might be the knife, the garden, and the action of graspino- the
knife, pressing it to his breast, putting it into his pocket, or
something of the kind. But the mere putting together of the
possessor and the possessed may answer the purpose, as is well
shown by the way in which a deaf-and-dumb man designates
his wife's daughter's husband and children in makino- his will
by signs. 