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"This exhibition was followed up by others made before the public in Salem, and in Boston, which excited great interest. . . . The ladies of Salem first suggested the idea of a fair; and assisted by those of Marblehead and Newburyport, they got up a splendid fete, which resulted in a net profit of $2,980.

"Resolving not to be outdone, the ladies of Boston entered the field with great ardour, and opened a bazaar on the first of May in Faneuil Hall. . . . The net profits of this fair amounted to $11,400."

This was the first fancy fair ever held in Boston, and it was long remembered as a most brilliant and delightful occasion. Boston seems to have been fuller even than usual of beautiful women, lovely girls and splendid matrons; and one and all entered heartily into the spirit of the fair, giving their time, work, and influence in the cause of the blind. At one table was the stately Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, then in the prime of her matronly beauty, perhaps as she appears in the portrait now to be seen in the collection of the Bostonian Society at the Old State House; at another Emily Marshall, whose name is like the fragrance of a rose, with her scarcely less beautiful sister Marion; the list is a long one, and includes all the prominent women of the day.

Dr. Edward Everett Hale, speaking at my father's centenary in 1901, thus recalls this fair.

"I suppose that I am perhaps the only person in this hall who was in Faneuil Hall, oh, now a great many years ago when the fair was held, which people spoke of as being the first great charity fair in Boston. I was a little boy, and I was caught by the enthusiasm -- everybody was caught by the enthusiasm of the moment. I wish anybody would look into her mother's storehouse of treasures and see if that mother, perhaps, bought a copal heart which I had cut out of gum copal with my jack knife and which my mother had strung on a gold string that it might be sold at the fair, -- certainly my first contribution, as almost my last, to any great charitable enterprise. And I had the satisfaction of knowing that the whole town of Boston, from the stevedore on the wharf to John P. Cushing, the great Canton merchant, and Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, and Fanny Inglis, who wrote funny accounts of the fair -- that the whole of Boston was interested, as I was, in this new institution for the blind. That was the magic of this man. He waved his wand and everybody wanted to help forward the work which he undertook."

The Institution was now well established in public favour; the next step was to find it a fitting habitation. Grandfather Howe's house might do for six pupils; it certainly would not do for the coming twenty, much less for the ever-increasing number to which my father looked forward.

At this juncture Colonel Thomas H. Perkins came forward with the offer of his fine house and garden in Pearl Street, to be a permanent home for the Institution, on condition that fifty thousand dollars should be raised toward its support.

Fifty thousand dollars was a large sum in those days, but perhaps money was never more freely and gladly given than for this cause. Jonathan Phillips gave $5,000; others followed suit as they could; Deacon May and other good men giving their time to the collection, while my father took his six blind children and "went about the State and about New England with them, giving exhibitions and raising money" to swell the fund. The sum was soon made up, and the school moved to the big house in Pearl Street, with its pleasant garden where the little blind children romped and played, often with the "Doctor" as their companion and playfellow.

This was a great triumph; but the way was not all strewn with roses and laurel.

"The romance of charity," says my mother, "easily interests the public. Its laborious details and duties repel and weary the many, and find fitting ministers only in a few spirits of rare and untiring benevolence."

So it was now. People threw up their caps and cried "Hurrah!" and gave the money; it remained for my father to carry on the work.

It was pioneer work. First he must make each path himself, hew and cut and clear the way; then he must lead his assistants in it, drilling and instructing, fashioning as it were with his own hands the machinery with which he and they were to work. Again, he must keep the cause always before the eyes and mind of the public, and gain for his school its place among the permanent institutions of the State. Last, (and first, and always,) he must direct every detail, watch over every child, teach, admonish, cheer and comfort.

His rules were simple and strict. Early hours, cold bathing, simple food, fresh air and exercise; these were his materia medica.

In a later chapter I shall try to show him at his work in the Institution; meanwhile, to give an idea of the principles on which that work was founded, I quote from the Report of 1874 his Counsels to Parents of Blind Children, for their guidance in the treatment of a blind child, from birth to the time of his being sent to school.