Part 14 (2/2)

”Did you, Mary? and what did you think about it?”

”The first thing I thought, ar!”

The honesty and sihted Bessie, and she frequently spoke of Mary's drea of another pupil also pleased her She taught a blind boy at Chichester to read, and when he came for his lessons the boy used to ask innumerable questions One day she remarked upon this, and he frankly exclaimed:

”Oh yes, marm, so I do, I always likes to know up to the top brick of the chiht by Farrow, had proved a successful and reed by this success, theof bass brooms was now added to the work carried on in the Euston Road The coarse fibre used for this purpose has to be dipped in boiling pitch, and then inserted and fixed into holes in the wooden back of the brooenious contrivance of the teacher, the hand of the blindpitch, reaches a guide, at which he stops and dips his bristles into the shallow pan He then withdraws his hand along the sae, kneads the pitch, and fixes the fibre in its hole Several men sit round a table, and are thus enabled to ithout risk of a burn at a trade which requires no skill

The blind carpenter Farroho had s for the Holborn cellar, had been from that time permanently employed in the Institution

In 1858 he was the teacher of thirteen blinda trade Levy had visited Norwich and Bath during the year 1858 In the latter city a Blind Home was formed for the employment of women instructed in the Bath Blind School This was done in consequence of a Report of Bessie's institution which had been sent to the Coe's Fields, Southwark, had also opened depart the adult blind, but we have no sheaf of old letters to give the history of this further developht well look back with pleasure, and forith hope They well knehom the success of the work mainly depended; and in spite of Bessie's objection to the introduction of her naraph closes the Annual Report issued in May 1858:

Your Committee feel that their report would be very ireat services which have been rendered to this society, during the last year, by Miss Gilbert, the foundress of the association Whenever pecuniary embarrassment has threatened the efficiency of the Institution, her active zeal has soon replenished the funds; and when the association has been unable to relieve thecases that have been pressed on their notice, the sufferers have found her ever ready to afford them timely help; and that, too, in a hich has shown such sy interest in their privations, as well as so s, that the value of the aid thus afforded can be fully appreciated only by those who have received it

CHAPTER XIII

THE FEAR OF God AND NO OTHER

”Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy ht”

Bessie's early education and happy home life counted for e of being thrown on her own resources, of learning the ways of a house and the paths of a garden She knew also that the happiness of the blind depends chiefly on companionshi+p ”A deaf person,” she used to say, ”is very cheerful alone, much s out his privation But a blind man in a room alone is indeed solitary, and you see him at his best in society It is social life which diminishes his disabilities”

Whilst she acquiesced, therefore, in Levy's wish that the work of the Institution should be exclusively carried on by blind persons, she was anxious that they should not be set apart and kept apart from other worke:

Spoke to Levy about the workpeople in the Repository not having intercourse enough with those who see, and thought of the possibility of their belonging to Mr Maurice's Working Men's College; I think that ht about their attending a Bible Class by any of Mr Dale's curates I said I should like it, provided the ion as if it must be a sort of last resource to the blind, to s L

understood what I lad I had mentioned it

Any display of the blind with the object of calling attention to their affliction, and extorting money on account of it, was extremely painful to Bessie She had too much reverence and tenderness for her fellow-sufferers to make a show of the of the tone she hoped to establish in the workshop Blind ht that they could do an honest day's work and earn their own living

An entry in the diary shows that she had to educate more than her workpeople before her vieere adopted

L spoke to ars to carry boards to advertise the association Told hily objected, and why

The workpeople also frequently caused her anxiety

Felt and compared brushes from W with those made at Repository

Our make is the best