The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1875-07-15
Blind Folks.

The number of blind folks in the United
Kingdom is stated to be 10000, and Il
large proportion of these belong to the
lower ranks of life, their blindness hav-
ing been brought on by exposure to severe
weather, overwork, or intemperance and
dissipation. Cases of blindness are COM
paratively rare among the richer classes,
they not being so exposed to these causes,
and it has also been found that nearly one
half the number Of blind people are sixty
years Of age and over, while of those
under twenty years Of age who are blind
Il large majority are found to have been
50 from infancy.
The world of the blind! 1t is not our
world, with sunny paths, brilliant colors,
and tlowery landscape. Ozark, dark,
the great soul of the blind poet, and SO
perpetual night, upon which no morning
can ever dawn save that of the Resurrec-
ton.
We are apt to think of the blind as
merely sightless, and sometimes have
closed our eyes and tried to imagine how
it would seem to be deprived of vision,
but we cannot conceive of it; we cannot
comprehend what it would be to live
continually, day and night, in utter dark
ness, knowing naught of this busy world
save what we hear and touch. How can
we convey to a blind man any idea of the
broad ocean, the sky above us, decked with
teecy clouds, and tae earth beneath us
robed in emerald loneliness?
So the blind dwell in a separate world
from ours, yet it should be tue grand OBJ
jcct of all education for them to blend
these worlds in One-to unite the two peO-
Piles more and more in feeling and thought,
leading each otter onward to that realm
where darkness shall flee away.
One OF the great characteristics of the
blind is everywhere found to be intense
concentration and individuality of pur-
pose. Whatever they do, whether making
a bead purse, weaving basket, learning
song, or cropping through the mazes of IL
geographical study, all is done with
steady, untiring zeal.
There is story told of blind school
teacher who could tell when the boys were
playing in a distant corner, although
person with good sight could not detect
the slightest sound. Prof. Sanderson
could, very soon after entering a room,
tell how many occupants it had, and it is
said that there was blind man in En-
gland who was surveyor and planner of
roads, bis ears informing him of the dis
lance as correctly as the eye to others; and
the late Justice Fielding, who was blind,
when coming into a room for the first
time, could tell the height and length of it
through the medium of his ear
In Egypt, where blindness is so COM
mon among the natives, and caused by
the terrible disease of the country-op-
thalmia-I saw in Rosetta an old mai,
1.-The blind water-carrier," he was called,
time after time come to the river on his
donkey, and having filled the goat skin
which he carried, and lifted it to the ami
its neck and start off to his customers, led
direction. Locality, they say, is strong
ly marked in donkey's Uranium" "Ya
muskun!' poor thing the Arabs would
cry, as he went along. Yet have seen,
lying or sitting in the doorways of their
dwellings,, these very same people, the
flies swarming in their faces and eyes,
bringing the same fatal disease; yet they
were too lazy to brush them away, and if
warned of their danger would languidly
reply: 1t doesn't matter; if the Lord
wills us to be blind we shall be blind.''
But in our enlightened land fear we
have, to certain degree, the same spirit
of the Arab. When we see men day after
day reading the news as they ride from
their uptown homes to business in the
lower part of the city we are reminded of
the Egyptian, for those black letters dane
ing before their vision in the jolting Of the
car are like the flies of Egypt, and sooner
or later the effect will be felt and the eyes
become weakened and diseased.
Children should not be allowed to bend
low over their books, to sit facing the light
when they study; and young ladies over
working their sight on some delicate piece
of fancy work would be wiser to spend
less time upon it and use their eyes in
less trying if not more useful manner
chronological Journal.
"A correspondent of the Spectator
writes that in an article published in the
Lyon Medical for April IS, 1915, M. Che
vile declares that he has seen mare re-
fuse her food and kick her stall to pieces
from jealousy whenever her groom coaxed
and petted another horse, her stable com