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It is wonderful what a wise mother can accomplish for her blind child, and the story I shall relate cannot fail to hearten those who have a disaster to right in the lives of their little ones. Dr. F. J. Campbell, who is himself blind, has done more than any other man living for the sightless. He is an American, born in Tennessee, and he founded and has managed for thirty years the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind at Norwood, near London. He is a teacher and an exemplar of independence, self-reliance, and dignified industry for the blind. In vacation time, just to show what the blind can do he has climbed Mont Blanc, and in work- time he has educated and placed in positions of competence some of the best musicians of England. He lost his sight when he was between four and five years of age. At that time there were only two or three schools for the blind in America. His father said to the other members of the family: "Joseph will never see again. He is helpless. We must all work for him and take care of him. As long as he lives he must never want for anything that we can give him. We must wait on him and do everything for him."

The family agreed conscientiously all but the mother. She took her blind son by the hand, led him into another room, and 'said: "Joseph, don't you pay any attention to what you have heard. You can learn to work, and I will teach you. In fact, you've got to work." She did teach him, and saw to it that he did what the other boys did. But what could a blind boy do? Once he suggested that he might chop kindling-wood for the fire. The father was unwilling to trust a blind boy with an axe. But soon he went away on business for a few days. Then the mother took the boy to the woodpile, gave him an axe and set him to work. When the father returned he found six cords of firewood cut and piled. "Well done, lads," he said to the other boys, and then they told him that Joseph had done it all. The father took the hint and bought the boy a new light axe, and from that time taught him all kinds of work about the farm.

Senator Gore, of Oklahoma, was stricken with blindness when he was eleven years old. His father told him that he must go to an institution for the blind. "No, Father," exclaimed the sturdy little lad, "I will go to school for the seeing, right here." They lived then in Mississippi. The boy was page in the State Senate, and boarded at the house of United States Senator George. e So he was brought up in politics and early acquired the love for debating and oratory which led to his success in public life. Mr. Gore's State will not fail to build the fine institution for the blind which some of its citizens are planning, for the welfare of the sightless must be dear to the heart of young Oklahoma, the first American Commonwealth, I believe, to send a blind man to the national Senate.

Doctor Campbell and Senator Gore are men of unusual native power, but their success teaches us surely that ordinary blind children can by careful teaching be fitted for ordinary studies and pursuits. It is significant, I think, that Senator Gore did not go to an institution for the blind, and the question may be raised, though it cannot be easily settled, whether our blind children cannot be taken care of in the ordinary public schools. All the apparatus they need is raised books, raised maps, and a tablet to write on. These can be furnished as well at a regular school as at an institution. The teachers are overworked, it is true, and in the prevailing ignorance about the blind they would expect a blind child to be a difficult burden. But a special teacher could be engaged at less ultimate cost to the community than the cost of existing institutions. The advantage to the blind child would be great. He would be brought up in the midst of seeing children and become a familiar and accepted member of the community in which he must live and work. His presence in the school might have a good effect on popular education by proving that education is a process of mind, and not a matter of apparatus. Solving mathematical problems in his head, he would suggest perhaps to his teachers that arithmetic is an abstraction, and is independent of chalk and blackboard, even of the newest textbook recommended by the school committee.

The reason for the institutions lies in the history of education, not in the essential needs of the blind. Philanthropists saw years ago that blind children were neglected left out of the race entirely. The first thought, naturally, was to bring them together, in a special institution. So one State after another built its school for the blind, and their education remained a mystery to the general public, surrounded, like most institutional education, by myth and superstition. Even now some parents shrink from sending their afflicted children to an "institution," for the very word suggests a prison or asylum. Under present conditions no parent should deprive a blind child of such opportunities as the schools for the blind afford. The children are well treated, they are not coddled, their blindness is not emphasized, and much is done to make them happy.