DO many blind people live in London?" It was only a few days ago that a friend asked me the above question, and now, dear young reader, I am going to pass it on to you, as I wonder very much what answer you would give.
Bessie tries to count up all the blind she can remember having seen, and says that almost every day on her way home from school she passes an old man who sits in the shelter of a railway arch reading, with sightless eyes but rapid fingers, the raised letters in a book, which she adds is a Bible, embossed in what she has heard called Dr. Moon's type for the blind.
She thinks there may be fifty blind persons in this great city, but Harold shakes his head and says, "Two, or perhaps even three hundred.”
Ah, dear young friends, your guesses are so far below the real number that I think we had better turn to figures for an answer to our question.
About every ten years a great deal of time and trouble are spent on taking what is called a census of the population, &c. From the reports made by the clerks, whose business it is to examine all the papers sent in, we learn many interesting facts about our deaf, dumb and blind friends.
From the census tables of 1881 we learn that while the number of deaf and dumb living at that time in London was one thousand nine hundred and seventy-two, the total number of blind was three thousand two hundred and fourteen. While for England and Wales the number of blind is set down at nearly twenty-three thousand.
Daisy asks almost in a whisper, "Have all these poor sightless people been blind from birth?" No, darling, only about one out of every eleven; at least, so the tables we have been looking at together tell us.
I once heard a lady say that she thought the blind who had never enjoyed the blessing of sight, and so had not known the sorrow of losing it, were not so much afflicted as those who after being able to see became blind from any cause I am not at all sure that I agree with her. Indeed, quite a number of blind persons have told me they were glad and grateful to have even a memory of sight. It was, they said, so easy for them to understand when any one told them of the wonderful and beautiful things which God in His love and wisdom had created.
Perhaps you would like to hear a little about a school in which all the scholars are blind, so I will tell you all I can remember, just as it was told to me by one who spent some years of her girlhood there. The school is quite a large one, about eighty girls, and I think an equal number of boys, being received at one time.
Maria J. was about twelve years old when she became a pupil. Blind from birth, one of the cases of which the blind themselves speak as "quite dark," she was unable to tell the difference between the brightness of a June day and the gloom of a winter's night.
Very small for her age, and far from being strong, her father who, being by trade a shoemaker, worked at home, had taught his little daughter to read when she was not more than five; so that long' before she went to school the few books she was able to get (in Dr. Moon's embossed type for the blind) had been read by her over and over again.
She was very fond of reading, and also of singing; but perhaps the deepest longing the lonely child knew was one for affection.
I cannot stop to tell you now how the Lord, in His grace, drew her to Himself, leading her gently on until she was enabled to rejoice in knowing her sins all forgiven, as I want you to read some lines composed by herself, in which she tells in simple but touching words of the blessed hope that is hers by faith NOW, of how, for her, the darkness will soon pass away, and she will see the precious Savior who loved and gave Himself for her.