ment
in embossed print. At first I could feel nothing like letters or any
regular characters, only a roughness as though the paper had been badly
wrinkled. A card was then placed in my hand on which the alphabet was
printed in very large type, and my attention called to each letter. My
fingers, then soft and supple, were not long in tracing the outlines of
each character, and, my memory being naturally retentive, I was soon able
to distinguish each letter, and give its name as my finger was placed on
it. Another card was then given me in smaller type, which I mastered in
the same way, and so on till I could read our smallest print.

I have been thus minute in describing the rudimentary process of finger
training, that my readers may understand how it is possible for the
fingers to be made useful to the blind. To show how quick is the
perception through this avenue to the mind, it should be known that we
cannot feel a whole word at once, but a single letter. And yet some of us
are able to read more than a hundred words per minute, and to trace on
raised maps boundary lines, rivers, mountain chains, lakes, straits,
gulfs, bays, to find the location of towns, islands, &c.

It would seem that the fingers are capable of grasping almost everything
that the eye embraces, though of course more slowly, and from the
wonderful acuteness of which they are susceptible has grown the popular
impression that the blind can feel colors. I have been asked this question
many thousand times, and have invariably replied that we can no more feel
colors than the deaf can see sounds or the dumb sing psalms. I am aware
that it is stated by some eminent writers that the sense of touch in some
persons has reached this perfection, but I have many reasons to doubt it.
I have no personal object in contradicting this statement, other than to
correct a popular error. Should be glad if it were true. It has been
accounted for by scientific men upon this hypothesis: that colors differ
in temperature, that red is warmer than yellow, and yellow warmer than
green, and so on through the spectrum. That violet is a cold color as its
rays are less refracted, that these differences are appreciable to
delicate fingers. I have tried many experiments both with my own fingers
and with persons at our several institutions, who, like myself, were born
without sight, and, have never yet found one who could form the faintest
idea of colors from impressions received throug