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On the side, "The Physician and friend of the Poor." I shall not try to gild that gold.

On the Reverse side, "The Advocate of the Education of the Blind." That will not satisfy those of his friends and relatives who will not see the truth of what you say, that to call him the founder of this Institution would be attributing to him too much. Suum cuique! Fisher was the first proposer, earliest advocate, and ceaseless labourer in this cause, He laboured with Brooks, Prescott and others, himself holding the "bow oar," but alone he could have done little.

I do not see that any one can be fairly considered as the founder of this Institution; though Fisher more than any one.

In 1832, a few days after my return from Europe, while riding with him, (7) the subject of the education of the blind came up incidentally and he told me of the difficulties in the way of getting up and organizing an institution. Though they had been incorporated nearly four years, no direct attempt had yet been made to instruct a blind child. I proposed to undertake the work, and in ten minutes we agreed upon measures subsequently approved by Brooks, Prescott and others, and in less than a week I was on my way to Europe to procure teachers, books, etc. From this time Fisher did not hold the "bow oar." But this is hardly to the purpose. I would propose this:

The early and ever earnest Advocate Promoter or Friend of the Institution of the Blind.

Such are my thoughts. I am content to leave this matter to your good taste and do not see the necessity of a formal meeting of the Committee.

Faithfully yours, S. G. HOWE.

Dr. Fisher's portrait still hangs in a place of honour in the Perkins Institution.

My one personal association with his name, beside this portrait, is his learned work on smallpox, of which Dr. Channing speaks with admiration. Illustrated with portraits from life of every stage of the hideous disease, this book was at once a terror and a fascination to my childhood. The "confluent stage" never failed to send me away shuddering, yet the next time I passed the dreaded gray folio I could not resist peeping again.

The Institution throve and grew; in a few years it had outgrown the Pearl Street house, and my father looked about for larger quarters. The Mount Washington House at South Boston was in the market, and offered many of the necessary requirements: space, fresh air, a commanding situation; briefly, in 1839 the Institution was transplanted thither, and found a permanent home.

The history of the Perkins Institution might fill many volumes. Its record has been one of steady growth and development. My father soon felt the necessity of making provision for the graduates of the school, and for other adult blind workers, while at the same time he felt that they should be separated from the pupils. Accordingly in 1840 a department was added "for the purpose of providing employment for those pupils who have acquired their education and learned to work, but who could not find employment, or carry on business alone." This grew into the Workshop for the Blind, which to-day gives employment to some twenty persons in making mattresses and pillows, mats, brooms, re-seating chairs, etc., etc.

The musical training which he always considered an important factor in the education of the blind led easily and naturally to the establishment of the department of piano tuning which has given support to so many blind persons; and many other developments have followed. In one of his latest reports my father was able to say that "at least seventy-five per cent. of all the pupils of the Institution had become independent men and women, taking part with their fellows in the busy world."

My father felt from the first the disadvantages of large institutional buildings; and it will be seen that he never ceased to fight against the "Asylum" idea in theory and practice. In 1857 he writes thus to Mr. Chapin, of the Philadelphia Institution for the Blind.

"The more I reflect upon the subject the more I see objections in principle and practice to asylums. What right have we to pack off the poor, the old, the blind into asylums? They are of us, our brothers, our sisters -- they belong in families; they are deprived of the dearest relations of life in being put away in masses in asylums. Asylums generally are the offspring of a low order of feeling; their chief recommendation often is that they do cheaply what we ought to think only of doing well."

But it was not until 1870 that he was able to carry out his long-cherished idea of introducing the family or cottage system, into the Institution. From the first he had made a point of keeping the male and female pupils apart; now he built four cottages, in which the girls were installed, the boys remaining in the large building, which has always been called the "Institution" proper.

The Perkins Institution has always been a favourite child of the Commonwealth, and has received many benefactions, public and private; yet there were times when my father had to put forth all his powers to obtain the money needed to carry on the work in its fulness: as when in 1858 he writes to Mr. Charles Hale, evidently in answer to a question: