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The consequences of delay in the case of persons becoming blind later in life are equally familiar to all workers among the blind. When blindness comes to a bread-winner between thirty and forty years of age, for example, there is a good chance of wrecking the home life -- the mother going to work, the father idle and alone at home, easily losing courage, physical strength, even sanity. And here I should like to urge a saner and more reassuring attitude of mind upon those who come in contact with persons whose sight is failing or very defective, whether at hospitals, in social work, or elsewhere. No one can venture to underrate the immeasurable handicap of loss of sight, but we can say frankly that hundreds of people are delayed or wholly kept from the relief they might have from special appliances and occupations because of the false notion that technically recognised blindness is the only excuse for learning to rely frankly upon other senses than sight. Prompt, substantial encouragement to learn how to use other senses is absolutely necessary at the start. It becomes "too late" with terrible certainty. Help us then to put the blind of Massachusetts in touch with the existing agencies for their care. It is especially needed because here in Massachusetts our blind population is so scattered that it is a physical impossibility to keep in touch with them without the help of local committees. Last year, for example, we dealt with 593 persons, who represented 145 cities and towns beside Boston. It would be necessary to call upon you in any case, however, to help in this matter, because of the depths of discouragement into which the blind and their families often fall. It is truly a part of our work to inspire the blind with confidence and courage to find what Mr. Macy (9) has so well called the "brave possibilities" under the condition of blindness. Last winter, in the city of Springfield, a woman died at the age of forty-five, who had lived in Massachusetts since her eighth year, and been blind all her life. She lived and died uneducated, a competent, intelligent woman, who would have enjoyed and appreciated music and reading, and all that education and contact with other lives means. She had earned at times a considerable wage from tobacco stripping, finding for herself, you see, brave but rather sad possibilities. There has been too much of this sort of thing; now, with your help, it will not happen any more.

Just here I must say one word of warning. Do not expect, when blindness is associated with either serious mental, moral, or physical defects, that more con be accomplished than under the same circumstances with the seeing. There is something to be done then, and the condition may be ameliorated; but it is painful to everybody concerned when the incompetent Have been encouraged to expect the new industries for the blind to make them self-supporting. The very foundation of progress in work for the blind must be discrimination in school and shop between the blind, a handicapped group, and the defective blind; not to do more nor less for one group than the other, but to distinguish between them.

Some of the simplest and most natural ways of evening things up for the blind are easiest to forget; in no little a thing, for example, as speaking, when a blind person enters a room or when you meet him, remembering to substitute a sound or a touch for a glance. Another comparatively simple thing is the matter of addressing a blind person directly, rather than speaking in his presence about him, as though he were an inanimate object or a deaf person. Mr. Holmes tells me that his own grandfather, to the day of his death, asked Charles's mother what he would have rather than Charles himself. Only the other morning, on the street car, the conductor having asked Mr. Holmes where he gets off, turned to another passenger, and quite confident the blind are also deaf remarked: "That man is blind. You'll have to look out for him." No wonder the newly blind man, condemned by consensus of public opinion to silence and inactivity, feels that life itself is slipping away from him. One of the partly blind men we know, whom the public would not easily recognize as blind, says that many of his difficulties in life would be straightened out if people in public places, like the railway guards, police, etc., only had a custom of speaking instead of nodding their heads. (He was not complaining. It was only a confidential comment.) Again, the recreations that come so naturally to the seeing are often difficult or impossible without sight, or thought so by the blind and their families, which is equally as bad. So it has come about that such a gathering as the recent International Conference of Workers for the Blind devoted a whole session to "Recreations for the Blind." And so it has come about that in some cities work for the blind has begun in the form of "Ticket Bureaus," whose aim is to get for the blind theater and concert tickets for themselves and guides. The point to remember here is, that blindness in a family means both economic loss and double expense of fares, etc., for a guide, so that those who as seeing persons could afford recreations often cannot do so under the condition of blindness, when they need them more than ever. Miss Keller's saying, that "the heaviest burden of the blind is not blindness, but idleness," is the one to remember when you try to think how to help them, whether in the matter of employment or recreations, or both. I speak of this side of work for the blind because it is one which can only be developed by volunteer local work. In Boston, for several years now, friends of the blind have made it possible for professional blind musicians and lovers of music to attend the Symphony concerts. I have always remembered the reply of a young blind woman who had just returned home after an absence of some years at a school for the blind. When asked if she did not find social life through the young people of her own age at her church (she had no brothers and sisters), she said: "No, I think they have no idea that I can walk and talk and enjoy 'sociables' like anybody else. They think I am an invalid." In the heart of a small city and the midst of a large church she was isolated by a widespread misunderstanding concerning the blind. We look to local committees to get acquainted with the blind of their now towns, and help spread the news that the normal blind persons can walk and talk and dance and sing and Work and play.