KISSES AT THE DEPOT.
AN OSCULATORY BEE BY FORTY-
FIVE DEAF MUTES.
Greetings Implanted on the Cheeks
Instead of Lips -- Youngsters
Were From State School
for the Deaf.
When the 5:40 Chicago & Alton from the east pulled into the Union depot yesterday afternoon, bringing forty-five deaf and dumb children from the state school fo the deaf at Fulton, the excitement could not have been greater if all the forty-five and the crowd of Kansas City relatives had all been shouting at the tops of their voices.
The deaf folk are great kissers. Every Kansas City boy and girl but one -- and twenty-six of the forty-five were Kansas City children -- was seized by fond arms, hugged tight and kissed upon both cheeks. The deaf people don't kiss one another upon the lips, or at least those at the Union depot did not yesterday afternoon.
When the kissing was completed the finger greetings began. How many hundred questions were asked and answered from hand to hand the innocent bystander whose hands were deaf and dumb could only conjecture. But every blessed child and welcoming parent or sister was talking the single hand language on each hand seeparately at the same time. It made the bystander wonder if there wasn't some advantage, after all, in being deaf and dumb. A man who talks with his mouth and listens with his ears cannot talk about more than one thing at a time. He has only one mouth. The deaf and dumb people talked twice at the same time -- one with each hand -- and listened with both eyes, the listener at the same time talking twice at once.
They are an exceedingly friendly folk, and everything was forgotten in the welcome extended to the home-coming school children. They didn't know that a dozen locomotives were blowing and panting nearby or that there was a roar of whistles and bumping cars out in the yards. One deaf mother carried a baby which cried, but she didn't hear it or pay any attention.
One of the youngest and prettiest little girls in the party was the last to come out of the car which had orne the party from Fulton. She stood alone on the platform of the car for a moment, signaling frantically with her thumb on her upper lip and her fingers wigging. The sign was rather an unexpected one for a neat little girl in a bright blue uniform and mortar board cap, to be making in the face of a big crowd. After a little she stopped it and dased down the steps into her mother's arms.
Professor D. C. McCue, assistant Superintendent of the school, who was in charge of the party, was asked what that sign meant in deaf and dumb one-hand lingo.
"It means mother," he said. If you put your thumb on yuour forehead and wiggle your fingers, you are saying 'father.' Your thumb on your chin and wiggling fingers means 'sister.' The little girl was calling her mother."
One little lad met no welcome. There was no one to meet him and he began to cry. Professor D. C. McCue took him by the hand to the depot matron's office. There the little lad sat and cried, waiting for his father or mother to come. He couldn't talk to a soul and his eyes were so red with weeping that he couldn't read the cheering notes which the matron wrote for him. The lad carried a card, as do all the deaf children, bearing his name and address. It read: "Everett Early, 1309 Crystal avenue." Once before, a year ago, a little boy who came home from the deaf school waited in the depot long hours until his father, who was at work during the day, came to take him home.
The other children passed through the depot at 7 o'clock. There were two parties of them, one of thirty under the care of J. S. Morrison, bound for Joplin, and the other one of twenty in care of Professor L. A. Gaw, bound for Springfield. There were no Kansas City children on the 7 o'clock train.
The total enrollment at the state school for the deaf for the year, which closed yesterday, was 381. All of these children were sent to their homes in groups of twenty or more, each group under the care of one of the teachers in the school. They went from Fulton to all parts of the state. The school consists of two large buildings and cottage dormitories for the children. In addition to double hand language, the children are taught to read and write and to work at some trade. There are classes in cooking, cabinet making, tailoring, printing, shoe making, harness making, blacksmithing, gardening, sewing and dressmaking. There are thirty-five teachers and over fifty other employes.
