The blind

“ In a surprisingly short time, the blind adult becomes accustomed to the new conditions, the various organs perform their new functions, and he finds life in sightless land to be, in many respects, very like life in that world of light and color, now only a memory. But a very living memory—enabling him to recall the faces of his friends, the glow of sunset, or the rosy light of dawn with the eye of the mind whose vision is keener, clearer than mere physical sight. ”

“ But the blind girl's home is the House of Night, And its beings are empty voices. As one in the realm below, I stand by the streams of woe! I hear the vain shadows glide, I feel their soft breath at my side. And I thirst the loved forms to see, And I stretch my fond arms around, And I catch but a shapeless sound, For the living are ghosts to me. ”

“ I see this miracle performed every day, yet to me it is ever new, ever wonderful, stimulating me to greater efforts for my people—because the blind are my people, and their joys and sorrows, triumphs and defeats, find an echo in my heart. ”

“ But when the globe, growing larger and larger as it drew near the earth, became veiled by a heavy red mist and finally disappeared below the horizon line, the face of the blind man would soften and grow calm, and he would rise and go to his room. ”

“ With curious instinct, the blind stuck close to our side; with their chattering finger, the deaf and the dumb described angles, obtuse and acute in the air; and like stones rolling down rocky ravines, scores of stammerers stuttered. ”

“ I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the blind are quite agreeable and ornamental compared with the maimed, the diseased, the shrivelled, the distorted, who lie under walls and upon the staircases of public buildings, station themselves at street corners, ride about on donkeys, and everywhere disgust you with their nauseous presence, and pester you with their piteous whine. ”

“ In another moment a man tapping on the pavement with a cane passes. A blind man. And I think of a plot for a fiction story. If a terrible murder were committed in a marvelous fog that hid everything the chief of police would summon a blind man. And the blind man could track the murderer down in the fog because he alone would be able to move in the thick, obliterating mists. And so the blind man, with his cane tapping, tapping over the pavements and able by long practice to move without sight, would slowly close in on the murderer hemmed in by darkness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Sometimes in the late evening one walks busily up and down the ward doing this and that, forgetting that there is anything beyond [Pg 46] the drawn blinds, engrossed in the patients, one's tasks—bed-making, washing, one errand and another—and then suddenly a blind will blow out and almost up to the ceiling, and through it you will catch a glimpse that makes you gasp, of a black night crossed with bladed searchlights, of a moon behind a crooked tree.
The lifting of the blind is a miracle; I do not believe in the wind. ”

“ A blind man stumbles, groping past; He cannot see their scarlet shine; And yet some memory seems to twine About his soul. For, oh, he turns As trusting as a child who yearns For some vague dream, and smilingly He lifts the eyes that cannot see.... A blind man stumbles, groping past. The window box across the street Is filled with scarlet flowers; They tell a secret, tender, sweet, Through all the dreary hours. And folk who hurry on their way Dream of some other brighter day.... ”

“ The blind live there, but Sunlight does not shun them! When she enters their dwelling-place unsummoned, and only attended by that glory with which God has adorned her, they may, it is a fact they often do, know that something blessed and heavenly is nigh, because they feel it in their enlivening senses, in the warmth of her caressing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a fearsome task; for the child has to be shown over and over and over again how to express various letters of the alphabet by shaping the mouth and forcing the air through.
Now, all that is pitiful enough. But think of the other horrible possibilities. Think of the child that is both blind and deaf! And there are such children. Imagination reels in the effort to grasp the full horror of that awful tragedy. The blind babes live in a world of unrelieved darkness; but the little one who can neither hear nor see finds himself alone in a desert of darkness surrounded by an ocean of silence. ”

“ When the blind are operated on for the restoration of sight, it is suggestively remarked by an eminent author, that the same succouring hand which has opened to them the visible world, immediately shuts out the bright prospect again for a time, a bandage being passed over the eyes, lest in the first tenderness of their recovered sense, they should be fatally affected by the sudden transition from darkness to light. ”

“ The blind, though unable to perceive the light of the sun, are, nevertheless, capable of experiencing its continual heat. The blind in heart, however, among the people of the Bayán—and to this God is My witness—are impotent, no matter how long the Sun may shine upon them, either to perceive the radiance of its glory, or to appreciate the warmth of its rays. ”

“ The blind, as they sit in the doorways, impassive in their eternal darkness, remain as calm as ever in the midst of this fresh gaiety, and, not comprehending what is taking place around them, they continue every moment to stop their dogs from gamboling. ”

“ And the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come, first, inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled Nunez greatly until he thought of the birds. ”

“ Every year, on the evening of that day, she would enter the best parlour, and, after closing the door behind her, she would walk across to the window and raise the dark green blind a little way. When the blind was drawn a broad shaft of light would cross the room and hundreds of little bits of dust would come in with the light and dance gaily all together in the golden beam. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let any one among us, who walks in the sunlight, taking his eyes as matters of course, cover them up for a moment, and think what it would be to grope about in a perpetual darkness,—not that he may give himself a gratulatory hug at his freedom from his neighbour’s affliction, but that, feeling its magnitude he may pity it,—and he too would possibly turn and relieve the sorrows of the poor blind man, as the placard bade him do. ”

“ The blind man can see no difference between a masterpiece of Titian or Raphael and the queen’s head on a village signboard. The deaf man cannot distinguish between a penny whistle and a cathedral organ. ”

“ Fawcett, referring to the blind, said, ‘Nothing, he found, was so hard to bear as to hear people, when they spoke of the blind, assume a patronising tone towards them, as if they were suffering from something for which in some mysterious way they should feel thankful. ”

“ As with the nation today, so with those interested in the welfare of the blind—we look to the children for the fulfillment of our highest ideals, and hope, in their advancement, to see our "dearest dreams come true." I am often called visionary, and I am proud to confess that I have a vision, a wonderful vision of the future of the blind. ”

“ No person born blind can comprehend the nature of the impression that sight conveys. Red may be as "the sound of a trumpet," blue as the outer air, and green a something connected with the meadows and the delight of flowers and shade; but except to those who remember, the sense of sight is only a name for the incomprehensible.
Bessie did not remember, and therefore she did not know the special hardship of blindness and that sense of irreparable loss, of "wisdom at one entrance quite shut out," which is so heavy an affliction. ”

“ But, help was near at hand;
And safe he came to land:
Though none has ever known
How he rowed in, alone,
And never touched a reef.
Some say they saw the dead man steer--
The dead man steer the blind man home--
Though, when they found him dead,
His hand was cold as lead.
So, ever restless, to and fro,
In every sort of weather,
The blind lad wanders on the shore,
And hearkens to the foam.
His hand has never touched an oar,
Since they came home together--
The blind, who rowed his father home--
The dead, who steered his blind son home.
THE FLUTE
"Good-night!" ”

“ An old blind man is calling on me. He tells me his country is my country, and his people my brothers and sisters. He prays God to bless me and preserve me. How soft and gentle—how full of good-will and patience—are the manners of the blind in all countries! ”

“ Her look of silent appeal showed me in which direction her wishes lay, but while I answered her glance by complete silence, I was conscious in some indistinct way that the business I had undertaken would be better furthered by his entrance.
The blind have often been said to possess a sixth sense in place of the one they have lost. ”

“ Few the souls escaping, and God have mercy upon those who stumble through the blinding darkness, made more torturingly hideous by the intermittent flashes of lurid light. And yet there come three, whom the darkness seems not to deter, nor obstacles impede. Only a blind person, accustomed to constant darkness, and familiarized with these streets could walk that way. ”

“ The spectacle of men—particularly young men—who have given their sight for their country is, to most observers, a moving one. Melancholy are the reflections of the visitor who meets, for the first time, a promenading party of our blind patients. It is the plain truth, nevertheless, that the blind men themselves are far from melancholy. One of the rowdiest characters we ever had in the hospital was totally blind. The blind men's wards are notoriously amongst the least sedate. ”

“ Charming folk-songs were interwoven with the vague harmony of the chords,—songs telling of love and sorrow, or reminiscences of the glories and sufferings of bygone days, or the eager impetuosity of youth and hope,—the blind man thus striving to express his feelings by embodying them in forms already familiar to his imagination. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!” ”

“ If the public could be brought to look upon the blind, not as an isolated class whose affliction entitles them to the pity and generous alms of those more fortunate, but as men and women, with normal aims and desires, just as full of hope, just as eager to work, and just as interested in things as when they saw them through the natural medium, their handicap would be lessened and their lives much happier. ”