This system must begin with the kindergarten and end with a completely equipped high or secondary school, bringing the graduates inside the gates of the colleges and universities for young men and women who can see. It should provide not only for physical, intellectual and ethical culture, but also for training along scientific, æsthetic and humanitarian lines. It should procure for the blind, both male and female, such superior advantages as would best fit them to share in the activities of life to enter the liberal professions, to respond to the ordinary requirements of business, and to discharge successfully their duties and obligations to society in whatever sphere they . may be placed. Working homes cannot do this. On the contrary, their natural tendency is to hinder rather than facilitate the attainment of such an end. They are merely expedients of temporary relief, pregnant with future evils of a social and moral character. They represent a system of alimony which is wrong in principle and pernicious in effect.

It is obvious, then, that we owe to the blind not merely an ordinary elementary schooling and some kind of technical training, or the opportunity of being drilled in a mechanical occupation and facilities to exercise it advantageously, but a rounded development of character and of their best and largest capacities. We owe to the blind an education which will render them strong and vigorous physically, intellectually and morally; an education which will train their senses to keenness, widen their horizon of knowledge, nurture their natural aptitudes, foster their individuality, broaden their sympathies, chasten their feelings, warm their hearts by the contemplation of noble deeds, introduce them into the ethical world and into new fields of duty, instill in them a helpful spirit, enable them to attain a wide range of mental vision and enlarge their power of thought and expression. Thus they may become better prepared to solve the problems of life, and act nobly their part in its drama when they shall enter upon the stage of practical activity. This sort of education will be for the blind a central sun of vast illuminating power, from which they may gather light and warmth and blessing.

The ideal system of education for the blind which we are advocating is briefly this:

I. A kindergarten and primary school, possessing an ample endowment and provided with the necessary educational facilities and the best possible influences for training the little pupils in a thoroughly rational manner, and laying a firm foundation for their physical, mental, moral, social and æsthetic development.

II. A grammar and high or preparatory school, offering a classical and an English course, complete in its departments for physical and manual training, as well as for literary, scientific and musical studies, and liberally supplied with educational appliances, apparatus and musical instruments of various kinds. Its financial status should be such as to enable it to secure the services of a strong corps of efficient and wide-awake teachers. Its curriculum should take into account the needs, capacity, limitations, tastes and special requirements of the blind, thus making provision for a thorough cultivation and discipline of all their powers. The graduates of these institutions would then be adequately equipped to enter any of our colleges and universities; or, if they could not afford to do this, to take their places among the active and self-relying members of society.

III. A special fund, the income to be used in conferring scholarships on deserving graduates of the institutions for the blind, in order to enable such graduates to avail themselves of the superior educational advantages afforded to youth of both sexes by the best colleges, universities, conservatories of music and professional or commercial schools, where, in company with those who can see, the blind may pursue their studies in any branch of knowledge, in music or in the arts, sciences or professions.

It may be well for us to consider, in this connection, the question whether it would be right and best to found and support a separate college or university for the exclusive use of the blind. Experience, reflection and sound philosophy all lead to the conclusion that persons suffering under a common infirmity are liable to certain unfavorable and undesirable consequences flowing from their abnormal condition. These are undoubtedly aggravated by the close association of the sufferers in considerable numbers and for a great length of time, while they are lessened by constant intercourse with ordinary and normal

persons. The reasons for this are obvious. The loss of sight, for instance, is not merely a bodily infirmity; it affects all sides of the human organism, the intellectual and moral no less than the physical. It is the unanimous opinion of all competent and candid judges that the blind, as a class, incline to one or the other of two extremes of conduct. They are either very timid, meek, hesitating and dependent, or bold, egotistical and conceited. Owing to their infirmity, which tends to shut them off from the rest of the world and to turn their thoughts inward, they are very apt to think constantly of themselves and to take wrong views of things, which dwarf their lives and hinder their possibilities of growth and success. They keep their thoughts entangled ever in the low lands of selfishness, and miss the glories of the hills of self-forgetfulness and of the heavens that bend over them.

These traits and various other peculiarities of a similar nature, which ensue from the extinction of the visual sense, are intensified by the practice of removing the victims of this calamity from their homes and of gathering them together in large institutions for the purpose of teaching and training them. Great and beneficent as the advantages which our pupils derive from the present system of educating them unquestionably are, we cannot but regret most profoundly the necessity which renders it imperative for us to bring under one roof a large number of sightless children and youth, setting them apart as a separate class, and which is often fraught with consequences both evil and permanent.

Now, in order that we may be able to eradicate some of the most serious of these drawbacks, and to reduce to the lowest possible degree the dissemination and growth of all sorts of uncouth peculiarities and oddities, we must adhere rigidly to the cardinal principles of the minimum of association of blind persons and the maximum of their commingling with those who

can see.

It is beyond question that the largest possibilities of success for this class of our fellow-men, in whatever they may undertake to do, depend upon their ability to enter on the arena of the competitions of life with those whom they will naturally meet in the home, the neighborhood, the social and religious assemblies and in the world of business.

For these reasons it is of the utmost importance that, as soon as the graduates of the institutions for the blind are thoroughly fitted for a course of higher academic and scientific instruction or of training for one of the liberal professions or for a business career, they should be scattered among the ordinary institutions of learning and not gathered again into receptacles of darkness and gloom, established for the special benefit of sightless persons, which may be known by the name of colleges and uni-* versities for the blind. It would be an unmitigated misfortune for the blind to be kept by themselves for an additional period of four or five years, apart from those of their fellow-men among whom the work of their life lies. Their most vital interests demand that they should be placed in the leading colleges or best professional and commercial schools, and thrown with young men and women who see. They must be put in a position to compare themselves with others of their own age and to measure accurately their ability, so that they may avoid the fatal error of overestimating or underrating it. They must be brought into touch with the great forces of the world, which make progress and civilization possible, and must learn something of the part that each has to play in the drama of human existence. Whether they desire to devote themselves to commercial pursuits, or to become teachers, ministers, lawyers, business men or practitioners of massage, they must at this last. period of preparation be educated and trained side by side with those among whom they are destined to exercise their chosen calling. They must acquire a knowledge of the practical affairs of life, and of the manners, notions and usages of society. They must come in contact with the great and moving world, and hear and know more of its customs and interests, and shape their own modes of thinking and motives of action more in accordance with those of the people with whom they are to live after the completion of their education.

In no institutions of learning maintained solely for the benefit of a class of children and youth laboring under a common physical disability can any of these precious practical lessons be learned. Hence the absolute necessity for funds to provide for as many scholarships as may be required by eligible candidates among the blind for higher education.

EDITORIAL.

HE Society of American Authors, whose headquarters are at 71 Broadway, New York City, are making a determined effort this winter to secure the passage of a "bill entitling authors' manuscripts to be mailed at third-class rates,"—that is, two ounces for one .cent. We heartily indorse this effort. There are large numbers of men and women-said to be over 20,000, not including editors and their employés-in this country who seek to live by their pens. They represent much of the highest culture and original brain power in the country. But, usually, they find life a battle as they have not private means, and their incomes are somewhat precarious. To such earnest workers the outlay for postage stamps is a heavy drain upon slender resources and all too meager incomes. Often a manuscript has to be sent out ten, fifteen or twenty times-and this means postage both ways-before it is accepted. To ask our writers to pay full letter postage all the time, back and forth, on their writings is a real hardship. It burdens a class who can least easily afford it, and who ought not to be thus burdened. This class deserves well of the country whose literature they make and whose standards they strive to elevate. Let them be encouraged by removing a part of the expense they must now incur in sending manuscripts to and fro. We trust every member of Congress will fully realize the wisdom and justice of this measure, and work for it till the said bill becomes law.

THE

HE central proposition around which the class of rough and ready critics of our entire scheme of public education would seem to revolve, is the magnifying of what is called "individual training" in the schoolroom, and the pitiless denunciation of present methods of instruction as hostile to the development of all true individuality of character. Along with this comes in the demand that the elective scheme of study, already adopted in the leading colleges and universities, shall be pushed down not only into the secondary, but the elementary departments; in fact that beginning with the kindergarten, the great effort of the teacher shall be to discover the special aptitudes-physical, mental and moral—of each child, lead it along in the paths of its own choosing, and even in childhood anticipate its destiny in after life. But this conception of the school and the teacher's duty not only demands impossibilities in the instructor, but violates one of the highest functions of school life. It does not seem to occur