This booklet, published to raise ten thousand pounds for the construction of buildings for the Adult Deaf and Dumb Mission (later the Victorian Deaf Society), seems to us today to be a work of charity propaganda, prompting people to pity and compassion in order to persuade them to donate money, time or other efforts towards the cause. It also contains sterm admonitions to parents of deaf children that “Parents who let their deaf-mute children grow up without education should bear in mind that they are guilty of one of the worst crimes against their own children, as they doom them to be burdens to themslves, as well as burdens upon the country.” Ernest Abraham appears to have been the author of much of the booklet.