Part 13

“Passing from the work-room we enter the children’s department. There are three classes, corresponding to the ages of the pupils: the intermediate, primary, and the school for the very young. Every one is blind, and as in the work-room, they knit, or rather learn to knit in the intervals between their lessons and play. I find that the same methods for teaching reading and writing are used as are common in institutions for the blind. The instruments for writing are the point, the tablet, and the guide invented by Louis Brille. This system satisfies the intellectual needs of the blind, but does not permit them to enter into communication with persons who have not studied the system. In this system each letter of the alphabet, each figure, each punctuation mark forms in relief a certain number of points. By pressing the ends of the fingers over the projecting points of these letters a blind person will read as rapidly as a person who sees will read the printed volume. Often I have seen the blind follow the lines of one of these books with his left hand, while with his right he reproduced it on M. Brille’s apparatus. A blind man named Foucant invented a very ingenious instrument composed of ten blunt points fastened in an iron triangle, and furnished with a spring. The instrument is mounted on a guide whose ten ends move in the groove of a frame. The apparatus moves on the guide from left to right, as in writing, and the guide moves up and down to mark the lines. The base of six points are placed in juxtaposition, and rest on a sheet of lead, the black surface of which is applied to a sheet of white paper; by striking the head of the point there is obtained a black point. By this means Roman letters are formed, each letter being composed of several points; in one word I counted fifty-eight. By this instrument some of the blind write very rapidly, and it is very valuable to them, as it gives them an opportunity to correspond with those who see; but this writing, clear as it is, has one great drawback; the blind can not read it. The impression produced by the stroke of the point is too feeble to be perceptible to the most delicate touch. After this invention, there still remained the problem of giving the blind a method of writing which could be read by them and by those who see. I believe that the problem has been solved. Count Jay de Beaufort has invented a very simple system. Abandoning the methods of Brille and Foucant, the Roman letters and the English writing, he has adopted a kind of heavy sloping style of writing which resembles the round hand, and is written wrong side to, like engravers’ and lithographers’ work. A little time and attention enables the pupil to master this style. A sheet of paper, which is at the same time solid and soft, is placed on a frame containing a tablet which is marked with deep, straight and longitudinal furrows. By these furrows a straight line is obtained, and the distance between them determines the height of the letters. A light cloth covers the tablet. When the paper is placed on the frame and over the cloth, a letter made on it will of course be raised. That is, the layer of cloth underneath the paper causes each mark to indent the paper without breaking it. With a point or style the letters are traced on the paper. When the page is detached and turned over, the raised letters appear, recognizable to the eyes, and to the touch of the finger. The blind greatly appreciate this system, which is superior to all that have been invented for them, for it is the only one which puts into their hands a sure means of communication with those who see. Count Jay de Beaufort kindly gives lessons at the Institution for Blind Young People, and among the Sisters of St. Paul has trained several teachers, who in their turn are instructing their pupils.

“The pupils that I saw in the children’s classes are not yet large enough to be set at Beaufort’s system. The studies taught there resemble those in all primary schools: Reading, writing, numbers, history and geography. They omit sewing, which is too difficult, and embroidery, which is impossible. Very often they have lessons in composition to teach them to unravel their thoughts and express them with precision, a thing which is difficult for those who see, but which must be very painful for the blind. I wished at one time to assure myself of the degree of advancement in the intermediate class, where the girls were from fourteen to sixteen years old, and I asked the three most advanced pupils to write an essay on a given subject—a walk into the country. Of course the subject was interesting only as it was being written on by the blind, and I hoped to find some expressions which would denote the peculiar feelings which they experienced. But, no; their instruction had come from those who could see, and they employed the language of their teachers, not even modifying it to fit their infirmity. The three essays were very little different in form. They all described a trip which they had taken to the suburbs of Paris. “It was a beautiful morning of spring time.” “It was a beautiful morning in the month of May,” was the general tone; but I shrugged my shoulders in impatience when I read: “What a delightful prospect met our view.” It made me think of a composition prepared by a deaf mute in which he spoke of “The symphony of the song of the birds, and the musical murmur of crystalline springs.” In their desire to appropriate feelings which they can not understand, these poor people try to reproduce a language which to them can mean nothing.

“There is much that is strange about the dreams of the blind. I was struck with this while talking with some young people in the Institute for the Blind. They told me complacently of what they “saw” in their dreams. I was puzzled to know whether the dream of a blind person was like that of one who could see. I have found that the blind who have had their sight up to the age of reason, for a long time preserve the dreams of the time when they could see, as if the stored-up images reproduced themselves in the night. Little by little these images grow feeble, become dull, confused, and end by disappearing after fifteen or twenty years of blindness. As for those who are born blind, their dreams are in black. I convinced myself of this at Saint Paul, where I often talked with three blind Sisters, who were very intelligent. They explained to me that the phenomena of their dreams were borrowed from the sense of touch and hearing, and never from sight.”

SELF-DEPENDENCE.

By MATTHEW ARNOLD.

“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew; Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you!”

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea’s unquiet way, In the rustling night-air came the answer: “Wouldst thou _be_ as these are? _Live_ as they.

“Unaffrighted by the silence round them, Undistracted by the sights they see, These demand not that the things without them Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

“And with joy the stars perform their shining, And the sea its long moon-silver’d roll; For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting All the fever of some differing soul.

“Bounded by themselves, and unregardful In what state God’s other works may be, In their own tasks all their powers pouring, These attain the mighty life you see.”

DUTIES OF WOMEN AS MISTRESSES OF HOUSEHOLDS.

By FRANCES POWER COBBE.

I have no sympathy at all with those ladies who are seeking to promote coöperative housekeeping—in other words, to abolish the institution of the home. There may be, indeed, specially gifted women—artists, musicians, literary women—whom I could imagine finding it an interruption to their pursuits to take charge of a house. But, strange to say, though I have had a pretty large acquaintance with many of the most eminent of such women, I have almost invariably found them particularly proud of their housekeeping, and clever at the performance of all household duties, not excepting the ordering of “judicious” dinners. Not to make personal remarks on living friends, I will remind you that the greatest woman mathematician of any age, Mary Somerville, was renowned for her good housekeeping, and, I can add from my own knowledge, was an excellent judge of a well-dressed _déjeuner_; while Madame de Staël, driven by Napoleon from her home, went about Europe, as it was said, “preceded by her reputation and followed by her cook.”

Rather, I suspect, it is not higher genius, but feeble inability to cope with the problems of domestic government, which generally inspires the women who wish to abdicate their little household thrones. Some sympathy may be given to them, but I should be exceedingly sorry to see many women catching up the cry and following their leading to the dismal _disfranchisement_ of the home—the practical homelessness of American boarding-houses or Continental _pensions_. I think for a woman to fail to make and keep a happy home is to be a “failure” in a truer sense than to have failed to catch a husband.

The making of a true home is really our peculiar and inalienable right—a right which no man can take from us; for a man can no more make a home than a drone can make a hive. He can build a castle or a palace; but—poor creature!—be he wise as Solomon and rich as Crœsus, he can not turn it into a home. No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a woman—a woman all by herself, if she likes, and without any man to help her—who can turn a house into a home. Woe to the wretched man who disputes her monopoly, and thinks, because he can arrange a club, he can make a home! Nemesis overtakes him in his old bachelorhood, when a home becomes the supreme ideal of his desires; and we see him—him who scorned the home-making of a _lady_—obliged to put up with the oppression of his cook or the cruelty of his nurse!

In the first place, if home be our kingdom, it must be our joy and privilege to convert that domain, as quickly and as perfectly as we may, into a little province of the Kingdom of God; for remember that we may look on all our duties in this cheering and beautiful light—first, to set up God’s Kingdom in our own hearts, making them pure and true and loving, and then to make our homes little provinces of the same kingdom, and, lastly, to try to extend that kingdom through the world—the empire of Justice, Truth and Love. We are entirely responsible for our own souls, and very greatly responsible for those of all the dwellers in our homes; and, in a lesser way, we are answerable for each widening circle beyond us. How shall we set about making our homes provinces of the Divine Kingdom?

1. Nobody must be morally the worse for living under our roof, if we can possibly help it. It is the _minimum_ of our duties to make sure that temptations to misconduct or intemperance are not left in any one’s way, or bad feelings suffered to grow up, or habits of moroseness or domineering formed, or quarrels kept hot, as if they were toasts before the kitchen fire. As much as possible, on the contrary, everybody must be helped to be better—not made better by act of the drawing-room, remember—that is impossible—but _helped_ to be better. The way to do this, I apprehend, is neither very much to scold, or exhort, or insist on people going to church whether they like it or not, or reading family prayers (excellent though that practice may be), but rather to spread through the house such an atmosphere of frank confidence and kindliness with servants, and of love and trust with children and relations, that bad feelings and doings will really have no place, no temptation, and, if they intrude, will soon die out.

One such point out of many I may cite as specially concerning us women. Is it not absurd for a lady who spends hundreds of pounds and thousands of hours on her toilet, and takes evident pleasure in attracting admiration in fashionable raiment not always perfectly decent, to turn and lecture poor Mary Ann, her housemaid, on sobriety in attire, and set forth to her the peril and folly of flowers in her bonnet? The mistress who dresses modestly and sensibly may reasonably hope in time that her servants will dress modestly and sensibly likewise; but certainly they will not do so while she exhibits to their foolish young eyes the example of extravagance and folly.

2. Next to the _virtue_ of those who live in our homes, their _happiness_ should occupy us. In the first place, no creature under our roof should ever be miserable, if we can prevent it. In how many otherwise happy homes is there not one such miserable being? Sometimes, it is the sufferers’ own fault; their minds are warped and despairful, and our utmost efforts perhaps can only cheer them a little. But much oftener there is to be found in a large household some poor creature who has fallen, through no fault, into the miserable position of the family _butt_—the object of ill-natured and unfeeling jests and rude speeches, the last person to be given any pleasure, and the first person to be made to suffer any privation or ill-temper. Sometimes, it is a poor governess or tutor; sometimes, an old aunt or poor relation; now and then, but rarely in these days, a stupid servant; most often of all, a child, who is, perhaps, a step-child or nephew or niece of the mistress of the house, or, alas! her own child, only deformed in some way, or deficient in intellect. Then, the hapless, frightened creature, afraid of punishment, looks with furtive glances at the frowning faces about it, tries to escape by some little transparent deception, and only incurs the heavier penalty of falsehood and the name of a liar; and so the evil goes on growing day by day. It is astonishing and horrible to witness how the deep-seated, frightful human passion, which I have elsewhere named _heteropathy_, develops itself in such circumstances—the sight of suffering and down-trodden misery exciting not pity, but the reverse—a sort of cruel _aversion_ in the bystanders, till the whole household sometimes joins in hating the poor, helpless, and isolated victim.

My friends, if you ever see anything approaching to this in your homes, for God’s sake, set your faces like a flint against it! If you dislike and mistrust the poor victim yourself, as you probably will do at first, never mind! Take my word for it, the first thing to be done in the Kingdom of God is to do _justice_ to all—to secure that no creature, however mean or even loathsome, should be treated with injustice. If you are, as I am supposing, mistress of the house, stop this persecution with a high hand; and if you have been in any way to blame in it, if it be _your_ dislike which you see thus reflected in the faces of your dependants, repent your great fault, and make amends to your victim. If you are not mistress, only a guest perhaps, or a humble friend, even then you can and ought to do much; you can look grave and pained whenever the butt is laughed at and jeered; and you can deliberately fix your eyes on him or her with sympathy, and treat him with respect. Even these little tokens of condemnation of what is going on will have (you may be sure) a startling effect on those whose custom it has become to treat the poor soul with contempt; and they will probably be angry with you for exhibiting them. You will never have borne resentment for a better cause.

Nor is it only human beings who are thus made too often household victims. You must all know houses where some unlucky animal—a cat or dog—beginning by being the object of somebody’s senseless antipathy, becomes the general _souffre-douleur_ of masters and servants. The dog or cat (especially if it happens to be cherished by the human victim) is spoken to so roughly, driven out of every room, and perhaps punished for all sorts of offences it has never committed, that the animal assumes a downcast, sneaking aspect, which inevitably produces fresh and fresh _heteropathy_. You attempt, perhaps, to give it a little pat of sympathy, and the poor frightened beast snaps at you, expecting a blow, or runs off to hide under a sofa. Mistresses of homes, don’t let there be a dog or a cat or a donkey or any other creature, in or about your homes, which shrinks when a man or woman approaches it. And here I may add that, without thus specially victimizing the animals through dislike, a household frequently makes the life of some poor brute one long martyrdom through neglect. The responsibility for this neglect lies primarily with the mistress of the house. She must not only direct her servants, but _see that her directions be carried out_, in the way of affording water and food and needful exercise. A pretty “Kingdom of Heaven” some houses would be, if the poor brutes could speak—houses, possibly, with prayers going on twice a day, and grace said carefully before long, luxurious meals, and all the time the children’s birds and rabbits left untended in foul cages, without fresh food; mice thrown out of the traps on the fire, aged or diseased cats or superfluous puppies given to boys to destroy in any way their cruel invention may suggest, fowls for the consumption of the house carelessly and barbarously killed; and, worst of all, the poor house-dog, perhaps some loving-hearted little Skye or noble old mastiff or retriever, condemned for life to the penalties which we should think too severe for the worst of malefactors; chained up by the neck through all the long, bright summer days, under a burning sun, with its water-trough unfilled for days, or through the winter’s frost in some dark, sunless corner, freezing with cold and in agonies of rheumatism for want of straw or the chance of warming itself at a fire or by a run in the snow. And all this as a reward for the poor brute’s fidelity! When this kind of thing goes on for a certain time, of course the dog becomes horribly diseased. His longing to bound over the fresh grass, expressed so affectingly by his leaps and bounds when we approach his miserable dungeon, is not merely a longing for his natural pleasure, but for that which is indispensable to his health—namely, exercise and the power to eat grass; and, if refused, he very soon falls into disease; his beautiful coat becomes mangy and red; he is irritable, and becomes revolting to everybody, and the nurse cries to the children, who were his only friends and visitors, “Don’t go near that dog!”

I say it deliberately, the mistress of a house in whose yard a dog is thus kept like a _forçat_—only worse treated than any murderer is treated in Italy—is guilty of a _very great sin_; and till she has taken care that the dog has his daily exercise and water, and that the cat and the fowls and every other sentient creature under her roof is well and kindly treated, she may as well, for shame’s sake, give up thinking she is fulfilling her duties by reading prayers and subscribing to missions.

I assume that the master of the house, where there is one, will, as usual, look after the stable department. Where there is no master, or he does not interfere, the mistress is surely responsible for humane treatment of the horses, if she keep any. Further, I think every lady is bound to insist that any horse which draws her shall be free from the misery of a bearing-rein. She ought not to allow her vanity and ambition to be fashionable to induce her to connive at her coachman’s laziness and cruelty.

When the mistress of a house has done all she can to _prevent the suffering_, mental or physical, of any creature, human or infra-human, under her roof, there remains still a delightful field for her ability in actually _giving pleasure_. We all know that life is made up chiefly of little pleasures and little pains, and how many of the former are in the power of the mistress of a house to provide, it is almost impossible to calculate. But let any clever woman simply take it to heart to make everybody about her _as happy as she can_, and the result I believe will always be wonderful. Let her see that, so far as possible, they have the rooms they like best, the little articles of furniture and ornament they prefer. Let her order meals with a careful forethought for their tastes and for the necessities of their health, seeing that every one has what he desires, and making him feel, however humble in position, that his tastes have been remembered. Let her not disdain to pay such attention to the position of the chairs and sofas of the family dwelling-rooms as that every individual may be comfortably placed, and feel that he or she has not been left out in the cold. And, after all these cares, let her try not so much to make her rooms splendid and æsthetically admirable as to make them thoroughly habitable and comfortable for those who are to occupy them; regarding their comfort rather than her own æsthetic gratification. A drawing-room bright and clean, sweet with flowers in summer or with dried rose leaves in winter, with tables at which the inmates may occupy themselves, and easy chairs wherever they are wanted, and plenty of soft light and warmth, or else of coolness adapted to the weather—this sort of room belongs more properly to a woman who seeks to make her house a province of the Kingdom of _Heaven_ than one which might be exhibited at South Kensington as having belonged to the Kingdom of _Queen Anne_!

Then, for the moral atmosphere of the house, which depends so immensely on the tone of the mistress, I will venture to make one recommendation. Let it be as gay as ever she can make it. There are numbers of excellent women—the salt of the earth—who seem absolutely oppressed with their consciences, as if they were congested livers. They are in a constant state of anxiety and care; and perhaps, with the addition of feeble health, find it difficult to get through their duties except in a certain lachrymose and dolorous fashion. Houses where these women reign seem always under a cloud, with rain impending. Now, I conceive that good and even high animal spirits are among the most blessed of possessions—actual wings to bear us up over the dusty or muddy roads of life; and I think that to keep up the spirits of a household is not only indefinitely to add to its happiness, but also to make all duties comparatively light and easy. Thus, however naturally depressed a mistress may be, I think she ought to struggle to be cheerful, and to take pains never to quench the blessed spirits of her children or guests. All of us who live long in great cities get into a sort of subdued-cheerfulness tone. We are neither very sad nor very glad.

One word in concluding these remarks on woman’s duties as a _Hausfrau_. If we can not perform these well, if we are not orderly enough, clear-headed enough, powerful enough, in short, to fulfil this immemorial function of our sex well and thoroughly, it is somewhat foolish of us to press to be allowed to share in the great housekeeping of the State. My beloved and honored friend, Theodore Parker, argued for the admission of women to the full rights of citizenship and share in government, on the express grounds that few women keep house so badly or with such wastefulness as Chancelors of the Exchequer keep the State, and womanly genius for organization applied to the affairs of the nation would be extremely economical and beneficial. But, if we can not keep our houses and manage our servants, this argument, I am afraid, will be turned the other way; and we shall be told that, _not_ having used our one talent, it is quite out of question to give us ten. Having shown ourselves incapable in little things, nobody in their senses will trust us with great ones.

MILITARY PRISONERS AND PRISONS.

By OLIVER W. LONGAN,

Adjutant General’s Office, War Department.