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Editor's Table, May 1852

From: Editor's Table
Creator:  A (author)
Date: May 1852
Publication: The Opal
Source: New York State Library

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11  

A Stage was erected, and Scenic effect given to they appearance, and their music and dancing was the admiration and wonder of the whole house, wondering at their great politeness in coming to make such a war against sorrow, with determined, energetic sympathy, that the Asylumians were almost taken captive, and compelled, nolens volens, to lay down their griefs, and resume their positions and obligations in society. The "light fantastic" step of Fanny, will long be remembered as associated with the buoyancy and vivacity of a circle of accomplished artists, who, while they appear as the personifiers of the dark race, display a genius, and excite a sympathy that rivals the more exalted and refined ramifications of society. -- The next day we received the following effusion:

12  

Ethiopian Nightingales, did you come from far,
To cheer the spirits whom grief doth mar?
Did ye come with your timbrel and sweet banjo
And songs to chase away our woe?

13  

Did ye come with just and pleasant mirth,
And laughter and dance, and thus give birth,
To a thrill of delight in all around,
That caused with joy their hearts to bound.

14  

Yes, minstrelsy gentle and pure and kind,
That diverted the sorrows of troubled mind
Came with ye all, and long will impart
A comfort, a joy to the troubled heart.

15  

Remembered you'll be in the roll of years,
In the realms that often are sullied by tears,
As the means of dispelling the inner sadness,
With your interlude to the thrall of madness.

16  

Go, Nightingales, go, with light hearts fair,
Go forth in a world of turmoil and care,
And bear in your hearts this happy thought,
For an hour you've sweetened the maniac's lot.

17  

Next came the hero of sacred music, Mr. Taylor, whose lady honoured our sensations with the song of "Coming through the Rye," in a natural and unostentatious style, then a Spanish lady. Senora Paredes, whose Castilian notes thrilled through and through the hearts of her attentive auditors. This unassuming group present strong claims on the public interest.

18  

The "Ethiopian Minstrels" of Mr. Fellowes, came in their whiteness, and charmed the whole of their auditors, whose applause was a sincere testimony of their delight -- The harmony of the music, the extraordinary representation of the character of the African race, and their politeness in affording such a treat left an impression of grateful tenderness, profound and sincere.

19  

But the Blind Vocalists! Whose heart was not melted on beholding them? whose mind does not appreciate the triumph of the State in this Humanity? and what New-Yorker does not feel proud at the issue of the exertions, that hath placed the Blind the Deaf and Dumb, the Insane and Idiot in a happy train for comfort, as well as in comfortable and enviable positions. The Institution for the Blind has done its part well, and we remember the interest Dr. Russ's party excited on their visit to Utica years since. We remember what the Blind have done. We have read Homer, and Milton's Paradise Lost, the product of his old age, and Mr. Wirt's Blind Preacher, and we have known some of Mr. Nelson's pupils, all as blind as a Bat, and still the most critical scholar in New-York; and we have seen the Blind Vocalists, the proudest exhibition to the philanthropic eye of any we have beheld in a long while. Formerly the Americans sent their Blind, if they could afford it, to Liverpool, and an ancestor of the great Mr. Jay, was educated to the highest degree of sensitiveness.

20  

We rejoice that America has a School for her Blind children, and we were so delighted with the display of its graduates at this Humanity, that we could illy express ourselves of them, and their effect on us. Their songs were chaste, their singing exquisite, their appearance interesting, and their reading of Scripture good and wonderful. -- Threading the needle, by a blind person, was quickly done, and excited mute astonishment. The Geometrical laws, were the execution of a blind person who had studied Euclid, and drawn those Diagrams, and at Diagrams drawn by the seeing for the blind to learn. This was a most remarkable intellectuality, honouring whosoever did it. -- We can't criticise the blind persons, if we would, our whole sympathies run toward them, with all our good will, and we commit them, with perfect confidence with ourselves, to the superintending providence of a just and merciful God.

21  

In the song of our visitors' styled "O Jesus our divine redeemer," our prayers ascended with theirs, that their darkness might not be forever. Indeed, we wished that although the darkness had regained her old possession with them, yet we prayed that the light of immortal virtue might irradiate their path, unto the perfect and eternal effulgence of Heaven.

22  

The day after the following verses weere handed in to us by one of our ladies:

23  

Though the flowers of earth from you may be riven,
Oh, be not desponding, the gardens of Heaven
Have flowers so fair, 'twould ravish the sight --
There your eyes will be opened in regions of light.

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