The Opelousas courier., 1886-07-24
HOW THE BLIND READ
Scenes in q Library For Sight
less People.
rukless Pages That Reveal Literary
Pleasures to the Touch.

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Pleasures to the Touch.
1.-THE ends of my fingers are so numb
declare I can hardly read another line
and I've just reached the most interest
ing part of the story-the place, you
know, where that big stupid boy Moses
brings home the green spectacles." The
little girl, whose plant begins our
sketch, sat in a comfortable armchair
before a little green-topped table, with
an enormous book in her lap. For an
hour and over she had been running her
fingers back and forth v e the broad
leaves, with q lightness and delicacy of
touch that was surprising. She did not
keep her eye on the pages. They stared
straight ahead of her, as if she was en-
tranced, but her voice, when she spoke,
was as soft and clear as the notes of sa-
cred music, and the tone of her COM
plant was decidedly cheerful. The book
she held was filed with little raised dots
about the size of bird shot, and there
was not a sign of printers ink about it.
The reader was blind and distinguished
the words by the senseof touch. The
book was the sFVicar of Wakefield and
it was one of the collection of the New
York Library for the Blind. This is a
free institution which was started in
October last by Miss Flora E, Rogers, a
graduate of the New York Institute for
the Blind. She discovered, while at the
institute, that only a small minority of
the blind were able to buy books with
raised print because they were so expen-
sive. The idea of starting a free circu.
lating library entered her brain, and she
wrote to MFR. Anagnos, President of the
Perkins Institute in Boston, setting forth
her plans and asking for advice. Mr..
Anagnos sent her seventeen books and
lots of encouragement as a nucleus for
the library. A room was secured over a
chapel in Ninth Avenue, and Miss Kitty
O'Neil, another young lady who is blind,
was appointed librarian. The library
was opened every Friday afternoon, and
about a dozen people came weekly and
borrowed the books. Many blind peo-
pie who possessed libraries sent in a book
or two from their own collections, and
gradually, from this and other sources,
the library increased until to-day, after
less than six months existence, it num-
bers LOG volumes.
The books are all of them very large,
and the raised print spreads the leaves
apart as they commonly appear in scrap
books. A book of ordinary size, re-
printed in raised letters, would make a
volume about the size of a dictionary,
and would cost at least So. The bible
which belongs to the library is divided
up into ten volumes. Not all of the
books in the library are printed in the
little dots or s'point print" as it is called.
The point system is the easiest of them
all to read, and to learn the characters
requires but a small amount of study.
It has one disadvantage. It cannot be
read by the uninitiated, either by sight
or touch. If a blind readers yes trouble
him, or in other words, if his fingers be-
come benumbed, an ordinary person can
not continue the story to him. None of
the characters in the point system are
more than three dots in length, and seve-
raj of the letters, such as tsch, . ssf,n OF
sfph, = are combined in one. Every num-
Der is preceded by six dots, three of them
above the remaining three, to distinguish
it from a word. The Philadelphia com
bination is sometimes called the Kneass
system, after the blind man of Philadel-
phia who invented il. The books now
IN the library comprise poetry, fiction,
biography and history, with poetry in
the lead and fiction a good second.
Dickens and Longfellow are ~favorites
among the readers. Notwithstanding
its small beginning the library promises
to become, at no distant day, one of the
recognized institutions OF our city.-New
Pork World.
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