I have more faith in the efficiency of the industrial education of the boys and men, because, in the course of my travels, I have found numbers of them prospering in the pursuit of the trades learned in the institutions, and some of them carrying on quite extensive operations. Boys are taught to make brooms, brushes, cane seats for chairs, mattresses, door mats, to weave carpets and do many other forms of useful work. It looks strange to be shown a brush in which black and colored bristles are formed into lines of beauty--initials, flowers, etc., and to be told that a blind man made it. It looks like a miracle, but when you learn that the forms were traced on the block by cutting grooves in its surface to form the figures, and that the black bristles were kept in a round box, and white ones in a square box, near the maker's hand, the mystery disappears.
Connected with the Philadelphia Institution are extensive manufactories, in which large numbers of workmen are employed. They are the largest in the United States that are operated almost exclusively by the blind. These shops enable numbers of men to support themselves and their families in decency and comfort.
The great interest manifested in the education and training of the blind, by thousands of noble people and earnest workers throughout the country, deserves the gratitude of not only those who suffer the great deprivation, but of the whole people; for the benefits they have conferred on us by educating and rendering us useful and independent, rank in the scale of beneficence next to giving us sight.
I take the liberty of introducing a few poems by blind authors, feeling that they will be appreciated by the public. Poetry seems to possess peculiar charms for blind people, who, deprived of material sight, seem to love to revel in the beautiful visions presented by the imagination. Among blind poets and rhymesters there are, of course, as many different grades of merit as among the more favored writers, but the proportion of doggerel writers is fortunately much smaller among the blind, and they cannot so readily inflict their scribbling in such volume on a patient public. The poems here presented are selected from among a number of the best productions of the best writers.