Miami River, at the mouth of Mad River. The Miami Canal, joining Lake Erie to the Ohio, runs through it, and the city is served by eight railroads. By population it is the fifth in rank of the cities of the state. The streets are broad, some of them 133 feet wide the houses handsome, and its large courthouse is patterned after the Parthenon. Here is a national soldiers' home. The city has large water-power. It has manufactures of railroad-cars, cash-registers, cotton, woolen and iron-goods, oil, flour, paper and machinery and large limestone-quarries. It has many fine churches and other public buildings, and possesses good schools, a preparatory academy and high school and St. Mary's (Catholic) Institute for boys. Population, 116,577.
Dead-Letter Office, in the United States postal department, is the place where unclaimed letters are sent. After remaining a month in the office to which they are directed, the unclaimed or “dead” letters are sent to Washington, and opened in the dead-letter office. If the writer's address can be found, the letter is returned to him; if not, it is destroyed. In one year nearly 7,000,000 pieces of mail were received. Many had no state on the address, 3,000 had no address at all; $92,000 in cash and more than $3,000,000 in drafts were found in the letters. Thousands of magazines, illustrated papers, picture-cards and valentines were sent to hospitals.
Dead Sea, the name of a most remarkable lake in the southeast of Palestine, called in the Old Testament, the Salt Sea, Sea of the Plain or East Sea. It is 46 miles long, with a breadth of from 5 to 9 miles. Its surface, which is lower than that of any water known, is 1,292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. The shape is that of a lengthened oval, with a promontory jutting into it on the southeast. The Dead Sea is fed by the Jordan on the north and by many other streams; but it seemingly has no outlet. The excess of water is held to be carried off by becoming vapor. The tall limestone-cliffs on the east and west, the muddy flat on the north and the low marsh on the south are all barren and dreary. On the north blackened trunks and branches of trees can be seen, incrusted with salt; while on the south is the remarkable ridge of rock-salt, seven miles long and 300 feet high, called the Ridge of Sodom. The proximity of lava-beds, pumice-stone, warm springs, sulphur and volcanic slag proves volcanic work at some time in the past. The long-held belief that the vapor given off by the lake was deathly is not founded on fact. Birds fly over and swim about on its surface. But the salt of the water is inimical to life, though some lower forms of sea-animals are found in it. The water of the Dead Sea has eight times as much salt as that of the ocean. In all lakes or ponds without an outflow the water becomes salty, its feeders all the time bringing in salt while none goes off in vapor, as the water does. The evaporation is great because of the great heat. Rain hardly ever falls; the water is nearly as blue as the Mediterranean; and, though its taste is extremely salty and disagreeable, a bath in it is refreshing. It is almost impossible for the bather to sink in it, however hard he may try. It was for a long time thought that the Dead Sea flowed over the former site of the cities of the plain (Gen. xix).
Deadwood, So. Dak., a city, the seat of Lawrence County, in the western part of the state and the center of the gold-mining region of the Black Hills. It is on the Burlington and Missouri River and the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley railroads, 175 miles west of Pierre. Its industries, besides boiler-works, embrace machine-shops, lumber-mills, brick and lime-works and smelting-plants for the reduction of gold and other metals. Population, 3,653.
Deaf-Mutes. Persons who are born deaf or who lose their hearing at a very early age are usually dumb also. Children ordinarily hear sounds and then learn to imitate them; that is, they learn to repeat what they hear other persons say. It is in this way that all of us have learned to speak. But the deaf child hears nothing; cannot therefore repeat; and so remains dumb. Deafness is much more common than was supposed some years ago. It was only when the many schools now open began their useful work that the numbers of deaf-and-dumb began to appear. In the United States alone there are about fifty deaf-and-dumb schools with over 7,000 pupils. The largest school in Europe is in London; the largest in America and, probably, in the world is in New York. Owing, probably, to the better nursing of children and to greater knowledge of the disease of deafness, the number of deaf-mutes is growing less in proportion to the population, there now being only one deaf-mute to every 1,800 people. No attempt was made to teach these children of silence till the 15th century; no school was set up till the 18th century; and teaching could not be readily had for all till within the last 60 years. The principle on which the deaf are taught was discovered by Jerome Cardan, who was born in 1501. He said that, while writing is associated with speech and speech with thought, written characters and thoughts can be joined together without the go-between of sound and that the teaching of the deaf and dumb, though difficult, is possible. This is very familiar now. With us it is common for a man to teach himself to read a language, though he cannot pronounce it. Many can read French who do not and cannot speak it. Yet this idea of Cardan's was new to the world in the 16th century. The mental condition of the deaf-and-dumb is so entirely unlike that of any other of the ailing members of the human family that it is hard to be
