In the education of the blind the greatest care is given to the cultivation and strengthening of the memory and the success that is met with is truly marvelous, for the amount and variety of knowledge with which some minds have been stored is to many almost incredible.

The industrial education of the blind is perhaps the most important of all, and all the institutions are provided with workshops, in which the inmates learn some useful mechanical or domestic art.  The female pupils are taught to make all kinds of ornamental bead-work, to crochet and knit woolen and worsted goods, to sew by hand and with machines, and some of them acquire surprising skill, though my own experience does not give me a high opinion of the efficacy of attempting to teach sewing, so very few ever practice it after leaving school, though I have found it convenient to sew on a button or repair a rent on occasion.  Sewing by the blind, though it may surprise the beholder for the skill acquired under difficulties, will seldom claim their admiration for its own merit.

I have more faith in the efficiency of the industrial education of the boys and men, because, in the course of my travels, I have found numbers of them prospering in the pursuit of the trades learned in the institutions, and some of them carrying on quite extensive operations.  Boys are taught to make brooms, brushes, cane seats for chairs, mattresses, door mats, to weave carpets and do many other forms of useful work.  It looks strange to be shown a brush in which black and colored bristles are formed into lines of beauty—­initials, flowers, etc., and to be told that a blind man made it.  It looks like a miracle, but when you learn that the forms were traced on the block by cutting grooves in its surface to form the figures, and that the black bristles were kept in a round box, and white ones in a square box, near the maker’s hand, the mystery disappears.

Connected with the Philadelphia Institution are extensive manufactories, in which large numbers of workmen are employed.  They are the largest in the United States that are operated almost exclusively by the blind.  These shops enable numbers of men to support themselves and their families in decency and comfort.

The great interest manifested in the education and training of the blind, by thousands of noble people and earnest workers throughout the country, deserves the gratitude of not only those who suffer the great deprivation, but of the whole people; for the benefits they have conferred on us by educating and rendering us useful and independent, rank in the scale of beneficence next to giving us sight.

POEMS BY THE BLIND.