To the Editor of the Nortu-Catva Day News, Dear Sir,—Will you please make known the following important news. At a meeting held at the Polytechnic Institute upon the dth of March, 1889, it was apparent that Shanghai was ready to act in relation to schools fo~ its Detectives. Both at that meeting and subsequent conferences of friends of the philanthropy, the question of calling a professor of the Branches of huniane science known as the training of the blind and the deaf has been entertained. The last U.S. mail brings the response of a man of the qualifications desired who had been written to as to his willingness to come to Shanghai. He is Prof. J. E. Ray, Superintendent of the Mute and Blind Institute," at Colorado Springs, State of Colorado, U.S.A.
Prof. Ray was formerly principal teacher in the North Carolina Iustitate for Deaf Mutes, but elected to the position of Superintendent of thie Colorado Institution for both Blind and Deaf, and entered upon his duties 15th Dee., 1887, to fil the place of Prof. D.C. Dudley, whose ill health obliged him to resign. The former superintendent, Prof, Dudley, so the report of the Colorado Institute' informs us, las since regained his health so far as to be able to resume his life work, and has been selected as principal teacher ut the educational department. It would seem from this, that Prof, Ray could do, without injury to himself or the Institution, what not one ina hundred men in his position could do, viz., resign the superintendency of the Institute for "Mute and Blind" and make another move westerly: this time to if we wish it, These facts about the possibility of getting a first-class man, experienced and enthusiastic, while not too old, were not known to the two of us who wrote to him over two months ago. We knew of his qualifications, but we were not at all certain that he could respond favourably, except that his life-long interest in China and the work for Defectives was known, as well as the fact that he had made one long move of seme thousand of miles in the direction of China and could the more easily make another. It is well known that the prominent teachers in an Lnstitution can furnish from their number a head in case of the removal by death or other cause of the superintendent. In a new field like Shanghai, however, a teacher cannot be supplied on demand, but on must be called from abroad just as wh the United States secured its first_tencher of the deaf by sending for one to France. Yours, &e.
Crosserr.
15th March
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.