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Rh and contact with men in active life — all these influences have had," he says, "their effect on my course in life, and my early ambitions as to what I should accomplish in my life-work, namely, to found and establish a college for the higher education of deaf-mutes, have been most fully and completely realized. I do not have to confess to any failures." President Gallaudet's preparation for his life-work began at a very early and impressionable age, and his thoughts were from the first directed to the help of the deaf, through his father's life-work and the fact that his mother was a deaf-mute. He has demonstrated the possibility of extraordinary culture for those whose sense-limitations are extreme and who might seem by the limitation of their hearing to be restricted from the highest ranges of mental development. His life-work has not only required great ingenuity of thought and method and great powers of adaptation and insight, but it has also been of a uniquely benevolent and humane character. The keynote of his advice to young Americans, is, "first, personal purity, an absolute regard for truth and honor, an unselfish disposition, coupled With energy and persistence."

President Gallaudet married in July, 1858, Jane Melissa Fessenden, who died in November, 1866. December 22, 1868, he married Susan Denison. She died November 4, 1903. He has had eight children, and in 1905 three sons and three daughters are living. His address is Kendall Green, Washington, District of Columbia.