I took great pleasure in examining, with my fingers, flowers, leaves and
grasses, because their great variety of shape and texture fed an innate
longing after something that I could not then comprehend.

When but an infant, I am told nothing amused me so well as a branch of
green leaves.

My early boyhood was spent in rambling through the woods, hunting nuts,
squirrels, chipmunks, etc., with other boys of my own age, in climbing
trees, digging for wood-chucks, skating, coasting, and in performing all
the feats common to boyhood, such as standing on my head, hopping,
jumping, whistling, shouting, &c. I shall regret to have this page come
under the eyes of my boys, for in noisy mischief they already exceed my
most sanguine expectations, and need not a record of their father's
boisterous childhood to encourage them.

This kind of life, however, has fitted me to enter upon a systematic
course of study, which I did at the age of sixteen. I was received as a
pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind in 1844. I entered in a
good, healthy condition of body and mind. Found there boys and girls like
myself, without sight, yet earnestly engaged in pursuing the various
branches of English education. Many of them were like myself, full of
life, fond of fun and mischief. Many laughable incidents and anecdotes
characteristic of such an institution are fresh in my memory, which, I
should be pleased to relate, did they illustrate the subject in hand. Here
I found sight, which I had always supposed so necessary, somewhat at a
discount. I discovered that books, slates, maps, globes, diagrams, &c.,
could be seen through the fingers, and that children could learn quite as
rapidly in this way as with sight. I was not long, either, in discovering
that the older pupils and graduates were intelligent, accomplished and
refined; that they were treated more as equals by the officers, and that
they were trotted out to show off the merits of the institution, while we
young blockheads were kept in the background. This, I think, did much
toward inspiring me with ambition. My progress at first was slow, having
to learn how to use the appliances. My fingers must be trained, my memory
disciplined and my habits of inattention corrected.

No effort was made, however, to take the mirthfulness out of me, and I
doubt if anything could have succeeded in this. My first introduction to
tangible literature was in placing my hand on a page of the Old Testa