cess. She could write in the
ordinary way, but to do so she had to remember not the form of a letter
but the movements of her own hand. Such writing had to be looked over in
case a word should be unintelligible, and she could therefore have no
private correspondents. Girls in Oxford and at Chichester had plenty of
spare time, but when the family was divided, and those in London or at
Chichester had the duties of their position as well as its pleasures to
attend to, there grew up almost insensibly a different order of things.
In childhood and youth the blind daughter was the centre of all activity
and pleasure; but the blind woman inevitably recedes more and more. She
no longer leads; she can with difficulty follow; and at a distance which
increases as the years go on.

The five or ten years that elapse after she is twenty, form the turning
point in the life of a woman, whether married or unmarried. During that
period, when she begins to tire of mere pleasure, there will come either
the earnest and serious view of life which shows it all golden with
promise, as a gift to be used on behalf of others; or a settled drift
towards the current of levity, frivolity, and self-seeking, which may
carry her down to age, dishonoured and unloved.

That which caused Bessie the keenest grief at this time was the
impossibility of achieving what she wished to make her life, and not the
loss of its pleasures. But it was the loss of pleasure which preceded
all other privations. Her tendency was, as it always had been, towards
things that were noble, and high, and good. Without any fault of her
own, without any change in her own condition, she discovered that
blindness would be a permanent bar to activity. Sisters began to marry
and be sought in marriage. A home of her very own, a beautiful life,
independent of the family life, and yet united to it; fresh interests
and added joy to all; the hope of this, which was her ideal of marriage,
she had to renounce.

Work in the world, even a place in the world, there seemed to be none
for her. Blindness, which had been a name, was becoming a stern reality.
She asked about the blind around her, those who had to earn their bread;
and the same answer came from all. She saw them led up to the verge of
manhood and womanhood, and then, as it were, abandoned. They were set
apart by their calamity, even as she was. Their sufferings were not
less, but greater than her own. Poverty was added to them, and t