contrivance imaginable. Wherever there is a turning, or an obstacle, or a step which might prove a source of danger or embarrassment, the asphalted pathway is slightly raised. It is high enough to prevent one's stepping over it without noticing it; it is too low to cause one to catch one's toe and trip up. Hence, it is only necessary for the blind promenader to keep his or her wits moderately alive to be able to go wherever he or she pleases in perfect ease and safety.
The Armitage Gymnasium, which we visit first, is declared by an expert to be one of the most complete he has ever seen. Lads of all ages are going through every form of exercise; here two or three are vaulting the horse with a neatness incredible almost to those who have not seen it; there another is working his way along the parallel bars; here one stretches himself at length on the long incline, a machine used for pulling up one's own weight, for strengthening the muscles and broadening the chest; there another turns a nautical wheel or is doing a mile or two on a home trainer. This last is calculated to inspire more enthusiasm among the lads than any other athletic or gymnastic feat. Ordinary home trainers, of course, have a dial which indicates the distance ridden. In order that his boys, even in such a matter, should be made as independent of other people's eyes, as it is the object of the school to make them in all details of life, Dr. Camp- bell has had fitted to the machine a bell which strikes at the completion of every quarter of a mile. How this broad-shouldered, strong-limbed lad astride it works away with might and main, bent, apparently, on making a record; how keenly he enjoys the effort, and how utterly and happily oblivious he seems of the fact that he is not as the majority of his fellows are!
Rinking.
From the boys' gymnasium let make our way to the girls', where roller-skating is going on. It is an apartment some 24 feet long by some 18 wide. Here are a dozen or more girls moving on the tiny wheels rapidly round and round. They touch neither the wall nor the seats by the wall, whilst the immunity from collisions induces one to exclaim: "Surely here we are not in the presence of the totally blind, whatever may have been the case in the gymnasium." We are, indeed. But how is it these sightless young ladies move so rapidly, and yet with a safety and precision which might make their seeing sisters envious of their skill? Solely by instinct and practice. When roller-skating was first introduced, Dr. Campbell had electric bells ringing on the walls, but he has now accustomed his pupils to do without these disturbing guides, and for all the spectator can see they find no sort of inconvenience from their reliance on their own senses. Here they go two and two, three and three, hands locked in hands, with smiling faces bespeaking infinite enjoyment. Nor does their accomplishment on the skates begin and end in what we now see. They have been trained with the most perfect care and are capable of going through the most involved manœuvres. Those who observe them skating in lines, parting, wheeling, crossing and recrossing each other's paths, may imagine that this sort of performance is only possible in their own rink, but last year I had a privileged opportunity, at
