Blind man

“ Those alternatives alone occurred to the blind man; the number of shots fired within the confines of the room below precluded any other explanation. He did not imagine the fact that the battle had been fought in the dark; himself perpetually in the dark, he thought of others always in the light.
The blind man stood barefooted on the floor, his hands clasping in one of the bitterest moments of his rebellion against, and defiance of, his helplessness of blindness. Below him—as he believed—his servants had been sacrificing life for him ”

“ Transmitting quickly hundreds of impressions to his swift brain and wonderful imagination, they created for the blind man vividly the scenes in which he moved, and in which he delighted with greater keenness than the usual seeing person, and probably even more intensely than if he had seen them actually with his bodily eye. ”

“ A blind man might have thought himself in the presence of some one monstrous human giant, overflowing with enormous vitality, warming the whole night with his breath, stirring the whole air with each careless movement of his vast body. ”

“ The blind man did not wait for any answer to this; he straightened suddenly, gripping the arms of his chair, and got up. There was more he wished to ask; in the bitterness he felt at his blindness having been used to make him an unconscious agent in these things of which Avery spoke so calmly, he was resolved that no one who had shared knowingly in them should go unpunished. ”

“ A blind man called attention to his dim eyes; a pale, scrofulous youth displayed the sores on his legs; a paralytic woman sought to join her woeful twisted hands: did the authorities wish to see them all perish, did they refuse them the last divine chance of life, condemned and abandoned as they were by the science of man? ”

“ Have you ever seen the glorious pool of light around a radio broadcasting station? Have you ever marveled at the thin, trailing filaments of color tangling in the nest of television antennas that the city carries on its rooftops?
The professor was worried, for along with losing my sight of this world, I began to lose interest in it. A truly blind man wouldn't for he has nothing to replace vision with, he's still bound to the commonplace globe. He can improve his hearing or his sense of touch, but nothing replaces his sight. ”

“ For what can a blind man know of color, or a deaf one of sound? They have both reason to wonder; the deaf man at seeing the musicians, the blind man at feeling the different openings in the palace walls ”

“ I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully tries to walk his old rounds, [97] until the unchanging blank that everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark upon his consciousness.
My temporary loss of smell proved to me, too, that the absence of a sense need not dull the mental faculties and does not distort one's view of the world, and so I reason that blindness and deafness need not pervert the inner order of the intellect. ”

“ That, as everyone knows, is the classical way of beginning the game of Blind Man’s Buff; and supposing that the blinded man pro tem, is properly bandaged, and cannot get a squint of light up by the side of his nose, and also supposing that he confuses himself by turning round the proper number of times honestly, he will be in profound darkness, and in utter ignorance of the direction of door, window, or the salient objects in the room. ”

“ Picture a blind man who is also paralyzed and deaf. He has been in this condition from his birth and has just attained his thirtieth year. What can the hours have embroidered on the imageless web of this poor life? ”

“ Sometimes a blind man or woman will study music either as a pastime, or in the hope of making a living, but the lack of eyesight does not increase or diminish one's musical ability.
In the lecture on the psychology of blindness, I endeavored to prove that the blind were not possessed of greater faculties than their seeing fellows, but that loss of eyesight made it imperative to cultivate the remaining senses to a very high degree, and that such cultivation led to a greater keenness in the interpretation of the information furnished the remaining senses. ”

“ But the Blind Man felt his heap and then felt the other, and then, being angry at the cheat, he gave the Deaf Man a box on the ear, so tremendous that it made the Deaf Man hear. And the Deaf Man, also being angry, gave the other such a blow in the face that it made the Blind Man see. ”

“ To the blind man that follows, it happens that having wept so much, his eyes are become dim, so that he is not able to extend the visual ray, so as to distinguish visible objects, nor can he see the light, which in spite of himself, through so many sorrows, he at one time was able to see. ”

“ THE BLIND MAN AND THE WHELP.
A Blind Man was accustomed to distinguish different animals by touching them with his hands. The whelp of a Wolf was brought him, with a request that he would feel it, and say what it was. ”

“ The blind man then makes any absurd noise he likes, either the cry of animals, or street cries, which the captured person must imitate, trying as much as possible to disguise his own natural voice. Should the blind man detect who holds the stick, and guess rightly, he is released from his post, the person who has been caught taking his place. ”

“ With his remaining faculties keenly alert, with a courage and fortitude born of many trials, the blind adult is prepared to face life squarely, undaunted and unafraid, asking only to take his place on the firing line, to march shoulder to shoulder with his seeing brother, and to do a man's work in the world. ”

“ This blindness is heroic, and is of such a kind that it can worthily satisfy the present heroic [Pg 104] blind man, who is so far from troubling himself about it that he is able to explain every other sight, and he would crave nothing else from the community save a free passage and progress in contemplation, for he finds himself usually hampered and blocked by obstacles and opposition.
The fifth results from the disproportion of the means of our cognition to the knowable ”

“ Now, there is nothing surely to hinder a blind man from conceiving the position of the several parts of a body with regard to the eye, any more than from conceiving their situation with regard to one another; and therefore I conclude, that a blind man may attain a distinct conception of the visible figure of bodies. ”

“ The nurse had followed him in; she turned the leaf of the bed-table for Santoine to write. The blind man could write as well as any other by following the position of the lines with the fingers of his left hand. ”

“ But the intrepid blind man, not in the least disturbed, said, “Much too cold, my friend, at this time of night! But we can have a trial of strength in another way. Judging by your voice, you must be a great hairy sort of beast. Pluck some of the fluff off your chest and put it through the chink in the door.” ”

“ F. Park Lewis, an eminent oculist of New York City, and a man who has devoted much time and thought to the blind and their needs.
Dr. Lewis says: "It is the mind and the spirit which control, and when these are great, they dominate and rise superior to mere physical deficiencies. The inspiration of great ideals must be held out to the blind, even more than to the seeing, from the very beginning. It is not enough that the blind man or woman shall have physical strength, but his training must be so well balanced as to give him poise as well as vigor. ”

“ First, let us consider the subject from the point of view of one who has been blind from early infancy, whose fingers are his eyes, and whose mental vision enables him to see many things not revealed by physical sight. A blind man once said, when asked if he would not be glad to have his eyesight, "to improve the organs I have, would be as good as to give me that which is wanting in me." This sentence sums up the whole aim of blind education. ”

“ A Blind Man Preaches to 3,000,000 People.
I was at a meeting in London, when I was there, and I heard a man speaking with wonderful power and earnestness. "Who is that man?" I asked, my curiosity being excited. "Why, that is Dr. ----. He is blind." I felt some interest in this man and at the close of the meeting, I sought an interview, and he told me that he had been stricken blind when very young. His mother took him to a doctor, and asked him about his sight. "You must give up all hope," the doctor said. "Your boy is blind, and will be forever." "What, do you think my boy will never see?" ”

“ Eichholtz, a noted educator of the blind, says: "Education of the blind absolutely fails in its object, in so far as it fails to develop the remaining faculties to compensate for the want of sight." "Touch and sight must be developed by means which practically in all respects are dissimilar. A blind man discerns the sensation from the real presence of an object at his fingers' end, only by the force or weakness of that very sensation." ”

“ The blind man, in his uselessness for pursuit, could delay calling others to act for him no longer. He started toward the bell, when some scrape on the floor—not of the sort to be accounted for by an object moved by the wind—sounded behind him. Santoine swung toward the sound and stood listening again ”

“ A blind piano tuner asks for work from house to house, just as a sighted tuner has to do, but, whereas we sometimes employ the latter, we refuse the former, saying, we could not trust our instrument to the hands of a blind man, and maybe we offer him a small piece of silver to lessen the hurt we have unwittingly inflicted. Perhaps a man with defective eyesight asks to clean house or help in the garden, or work on a ranch, or perform some light task in a store. ”

“ The matter is not mended if you suppose the blind man’s hearing to be so acute that he can register every stage of the struggle, and pretty clearly predict how it will end. He had better not meddle at all, until his eyes are opened—until he can see the exact position of the antagonists, and make sure of the effect of his blows. ”

“ We each held one end of a stick, and as we were on the crowded Serpentine, we came into a good many collisions. 59As, however, we were a couple, and one of us a heavy man, we had decidedly the best of these encounters, especially as the conscience of our antagonists was on our side when they saw that they had tripped up a blind man.’
In after years his recklessness became proverbial. He had been on a long expedition on the frozen Cam one cold winter, and was returning at sunset, chatting gaily with his friends to the accompanying click of their skates. ”

“ This belief, and the many foolish notions which it breeds, presents one of the greatest difficulties to be met, and, if possible, overcome, by the blind man or woman obliged to earn a livelihood. So potent is eyesight considered that, without it, some people think it impossible to perform even the simplest duties, and the person obliged to substitute fingers for eyes, and memory for pad and pencil is regarded as a marvel of intelligence and skill, and as possessing a sixth sense. ”

“ The blind man of spirit faces the unknown and grapples with it, and what else does the world of seeing men do? He has imagination, sympathy, humanity, and these ineradicable existences compel him to share by a sort of proxy in a sense he has not. When he meets terms of colour, light, physiognomy, he guesses, divines, puzzles out their meaning [106] by analogies drawn from the senses he has. ”

“ It does not suffice that the blind man shall be as well educated as his fellow who sees. Handicapped by the loss of the most important of his special senses, he must supplement this deficiency by a better training of his mind and body. It is not enough that he should have the good character of the average man. ”

“ Now there is another test of the collegiate amaurosis, or cataract, or whatever it may be, which has lasted 700 years, and has thus attained its incurable character. A blind man is clairvoyant and psychometric. He travels about almost as well as those who have eyes. ”

“ Physical handicaps weren't at all difficult to deal with. A blind man can work very well in the total darkness of an infrared-film darkroom. Partial or total losses of limbs can be compensated for in one way or another. ”

“ If he had a boy to go about with him, could he not talk as convincingly, work as hard, and, indeed, might he not put forth a greater effort to extend our business and make himself invaluable to us? This is a typical case, and one that occurs almost daily. So it is in all lines of work the blind man or woman attempts. ”

“ Blindness always comes of course from head-wounds, and head-wounds mean the disorganization of all the nervous centers. The Directrice left her work and went upstairs into the sick man's room and sat down by his bed. The great-shouldered, massively muscled fellow clutched at her like a scared child, and began in a rapid, hysteric whisper to tell her of the awful things he saw in his eternity of blackness. For he was not really blind, he told her, he saw, yes he saw, but only not what was really there ... ”

“ Most people think all that can be done for the blind is to divert them, amuse them, provide for them in institutions, or encourage them to accept private charity. This lack of understanding on the part of the public is the greatest drawback to the advancement of the blind, and often leads to untold misery. Occupation the blind should have, must have, if they are to enjoy any degree of happiness, or retain their self-respect. Loss of eyesight does not deprive a man of his desire to earn his daily bread, or to provide for those dependent upon him. ”

“ We have, then, the senses of hearing, touch and smell, each playing its part in the development of the blind child, and each playing it so well that the lack of eyesight is not keenly felt in early childhood. Not until it is old enough to understand the thoughtless remarks of well-meaning people, to catch the pitying tone, to feel the compassionate touch, does it realize that this lack of eyesight is to prove an almost insurmountable barrier to its future success. ”