e spirit illuminates the darkness. Outside the night is
black and dread, but inside there is warmth and brightness. The world is
narrowed to the circle of one's own mind, but the very limitation feeds the
flame of the spirit, and makes it leap higher. It was the most famous of
blind Englishmen who in the days of his darkness made the blind Samson
say:--

He that hath light within his own clear breast
May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day.

And it has been remarked in many cases in which men have gone blind that
their cheerfulness so far from being diminished has by some miracle gained
a new strength. In no case of which I have had any knowledge has it
apparently had the contrary effect. The zest of living seems heightened.
Not long ago Mr. Galsworthy wrote to the _Times_ a letter in which he spoke
with pity of the unhappiness of the blind, and there promptly descended on
him an avalanche of protest from the blind themselves. I suppose there was
never a man who seemed to have a more intense pleasure in life than the
late Dr. Campbell, the founder of the Normal School for the Blind, who
worked wonders in extending the range of the activities of the blind, and
himself did such apparently impossible things as riding a bicycle and
climbing mountains.

Nor was the case of Mr. Pulitzer, the famous proprietor of the _New York
World_, less remarkable. Night came down on him with terrible suddenness.
He was watching the sunset from his villa in the Mediterranean one evening
when he said: "How quickly the sun has set." "But it has not set," said his
companion. "Oh, yes, it has; it is quite dark," he answered. In that moment
he had gone stone blind. But I am told by those who knew him that his
vivacity of mind was never greater than in the years of his blindness.

My friend Mr. G.W.E. Russell has a theory that the advantage of the blind
over the deaf and dumb in this matter of cheerfulness is perhaps more
apparent than real. He points out that it is in company that the blind is
least conscious of his misfortune, and that the deaf and dumb is most
conscious of it. That is certainly the case. In conversation the sightless
are on an equality with the seeing, while the deaf and dumb are shut up in
a terrible isolation. The fact that they see is not their gain but their
loss. They watch the movement of the lips and the signs of laughter, but
this only adds to the bitterness of the prison of soundlessness in which
they dw