power of his young people's lives. The steam being ready, along what lines does he make the human engine travel? We start with the Kindergarten class. Half a dozen little girls are sitting at a table interweaving slit paper which presently is to decorate baskets and other things. One is a mite recently from Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She has mastered the theory of her work, and her little fingers only need practice to make them as efficient as those of her older companions. In this room is a glass case containing some clay models of pea-pods, buttercups, and other things that grow—which one would imagine they could never readily grasp in detail—every one executed by the pupils of the College. Even a small dog has not proved beyond the powers of these magic modellers. From the Kindergarten to the Geography class. Embossed maps lie on the table, and the pupils put their fingers on The Wash in England, or on the Andes, or on Tasmania, as quickly almost as one's eyes can travel from point to point. They answer questions as to what grows in a certain place, or who discovered it, accurately and readily. Other classes are learning geometry, the rudiments of agriculture, French and arithmetic. The reading class is one of the most interesting. Books in the Braille system lie before the pupils, who are running their fingers deftly over the mass of dots, and delivering passages from "Hamlet," with sufficient hesitation to prove the genuineness of the reading, and yet with an intelligence not always displayed by those with eyes who read Shakespeare aloud. Now and again the pupil comes to a word such as "Fortinbras," and it gives her just a moment's pause, creating an impression on one's mind of difficulties overcome, which only naïveté or the highest art could convey. Some idea of the extraordinary pains necessary to teach the Braille system—and it is unquestionably the best invented—may be gleaned from the fact that it has to be written backwards. For instance, the paper is placed between two strips of brass, the under strip being impressed with a succession of holes, and the upper divided into small squares through which the stylus or punch is passed.
Carpentering and piano-mending.
As the writing has to be done from the back of the paper, it is easy to understand that the reading runs in the opposite direction—a circumstance adding immensely to the labour of the learner. All sorts of contractions have of course been adopted, and the blind write from dictation certainly as fluently as the ordinary school-boy, and they can read what they have written even more fluently, for the average school-boy reads most things better than his own caligraphy. In the same way the most difficult sums are done by means of a type board, and it is simply astounding
