The death of Alexander Graham Bell arouses renewed interest in the great inventor’s connection with Martha’s Vineyard. Bell’s concern with the island and its people was much more than a thing of the moment. His visits and at least one prolonged stay on the island were the result of his desire to investigate the so-called “deaf-mute” town in Chilmark about which a fictitious tradition had sprung up.

 

In an interview with Mr. Frank Z. Maguire, of Washington, who has been on the Vineyard the past week looking up deaf-mute statistics, that gentleman expresses himself as follows with reference to the matter in its local application, and on the general subject:

 

It was the Rev. Charles Brooks, of Boston, who said at the late Scientific Association, in Providence, that there was hardly a living descendant of Martha’s Vineyard who could write consecutively a page of good sense! Mr. Brooks, it would seem by the papers, made himself quite merry over the supposed misfortunes of our people. He stated that but few strangers could be persuaded to settle here! And the following is given as one of his periods, when trying to prove us of the Vineyard of lilliputian intellect: -