s he faces at the beginning seem unsurmountable;
but at St. Dunstan's the spirit of the place grips him and the word
"cannot" disappears from his dictionary. But at first he has much to
unlearn. All his old methods of work have to be forgotten. He is, in a
sense, a child again, born the day his sight was taken from him. But
though his sight is lost, if he is the right sort, the greatest asset a
man possesses can never be taken from him--his spirit, his determination
never to be a burden on others; his feeling, his knowledge that what
others have done he can do. His confidence in his ability to make good,
his spirit of independence--he still has these, and they enable him to
win greater victories than any he might have achieved in battle,
victories over that terror of the sighted--blindness.

Those of us who claim St. Dunstan's as our _Alma Mater_ are often told
that we can talk of nothing but the place and the treatment we received
there. Our answer is: Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth
speaketh. She took us up when we were in the depths and remade us into
_men_; she taught us to be real producers; she made it possible for us
to take our place in the ranks of the earners--in fact, all that we know
and all that we are we owe to her. There is only one point on which Sir
Arthur and his boys disagree. Sir Arthur claims that it was the boys who
made St. Dunstan's; the boys maintain that St. Dunstan's made the men.
While I was in residence there, there were about five hundred and fifty
men undergoing instruction, and yet St. Dunstan's carried on smoothly
and serenely without the slightest vestige of discipline in the ordinary
sense of the word. Only two per cent. of those who passed through the
institution failed to make good. What other educational establishment
can boast such a record? And yet nothing was compulsory except sobriety.

I was at St. Dunstan's for sixteen months, and as my case was typical I
cannot do better, in order to give a detailed account of the work there,
than relate my own experiences. When I was ready to begin work, I went
before the Adjutant and arranged what courses I would take up. Times for
classes were fixed, teachers named, and everything done to enable me to
begin my training for the battle of life. I was, as it were, a child
again, about to enter school for the second time, but under vastly
different conditions from my first entrance, about a quarter of a
century before. Braille and