pposite direction from what I imagined. Strange how ideas of
direction and distance are lost when the sight is powerless! _Touch_
may find out mistakes, but cannot always prevent them. Touch may
convince me that I have arrived at my bureau, but it is too careless
to perceive (what the poor, straining eyes would have discovered at a
glance) the open upper drawer that salutes my forehead as I stoop
hastily to grasp the handles beneath. Touch is clumsy. It only serves
to upset valuable plants, inkstands, solar lamps, &c., with an
appalling crash, and then leaves me standing aghast, in utter
uncertainty as to the extent of the catastrophe. In such emergencies a
rush for the stairs is the first impulse. Ah! but those stairs!

I will pass over the startling plunge which begins my descent, the
frantic snatch for the banisters, and the strange, momentary doubt as
to which foot must move first, like what a child may feel when
learning to walk. All this only serves to render me so over-careful,
that, when I actually arrive at the foot of the staircase, I cannot
believe it, until a loud scuff, and the shock that follows the
interruption of my expected descent, assure me beyond a doubt. There
is nothing more exasperating than this, unless it may be the
corresponding disappointment in running up stairs, when you raise your
foot high in air, and bring it down with an emphatic stamp exactly
upon a level with the other.

But these are mere household experiences. Sad though they are, I
esteem them as nothing in comparison with my adventures out of doors.
In a dark night, and especially in a night both dark and stormy, I
feel myself one of the most wretched beings in existence. Imagine a
vessel lost in the wide ocean, and without a compass, and you will
have some faint idea of my perplexity, discouragement, and loneliness
at such a time. I have a strange propensity for shooting off into the
gutter, or for shouldering the fences, under the impression that I am
pursuing a straight course. I go quite out of my way to trip over
chance stones, or to pick out choice bits of slippery ice. I splash
recklessly through deep puddles, stumble over unfortunate scrapers,
walk unexpectedly into open cellars, and lay my length upon wet stone
doorsteps. I start back at visions of posts looming up in the
darkness, and whitewashed fences and trees, all of which would be
quite unlikely to be standing in the middle of the sidewalk, and which
disappear at