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Talking once with a woman who has given many years of her life to philanthropic work, she said to me: "I have been reading your father's reports, and find that most of the reforms in these matters (the methods of dealing with defective classes) which we are trying to bring about to-day, were suggested by him fifty years ago. He was half a century ahead of his time."

In studying my father's life, I am constantly reminded of this saying. Many of the measures for which he pleads so earnestly are -- largely in consequence of his efforts -- matters of course to-day. Make the blind self-respecting, self-supporting? lighten the idiot's darkness? of course! how should we not? But it was not so in the days of which I am now writing; and if ever there was a voice crying in the wilderness, "Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!" it was that clear voice of his.

A notable example of this is to be found in his Report for 1874. "I have had satisfactory proof," he says, "of the practicability and usefulness of sending blind children to the common schools. ... I availed myself of an opportunity of sending select pupils to a neighbouring school, and with good results. I trust that others, with more zeal and vigour than I have left, will put this into practice, until it shall be the custom to send to the common school such blind children as do not need the special attention and instruction which can only be had in institutions calculated to meet their wants. The practice of training and teaching a considerable proportion of blind and of mute children in the common schools is to be one of the improvements of the future. It will hardly come in my day; but I see it plainly with the eye of faith, and rejoice in the prospect of its fulfilment."

In this case it has taken forty years for our To-day to overtake his Yesterday.

We are apt to think of a report as something that we ought to read as a matter of duty. It was not so with these reports of my father's. In this country and in Europe, people were on the look-out for them. They were eagerly sought, eagerly read, translated into foreign languages, and no wonder. Here is no mass of dry details, no droning repetition, no general effect of moral sawdust. The clear presentment, the vivid and luminous description, the impassioned plea, seize and hold the attention from first to last; here, as elsewhere, it is the flash of the sword. We must look, whether we will or no. In his generation, these flashes startled, often alarmed, the pedagogues and reformers of the time; in our own, we find them almost without exception the common light of every day.

We have seen my father (through Miss Peabody's eyes) laboriously gumming bits of twine on scraps of cardboard, making the first raised alphabet known in this country; that was the first in a long series of experiments, the final outcome of which we see to-day in the Howe Memorial Press, that most beautiful and fitting monument raised in his honour after his earthly work was done.

The school being now established on a firm footing, and growing steadily in strength and in grace, my father was able to devote more time than ever to the study of means and appliances to help his pupils. They could learn to read; therefore reading must be made easy for them. They must have printed books, a printing press. The lack of it was the next obstacle to overcome.

In his Report for 1839, my father says:

"...It will be recollected by those gentlemen who were trustees in 1833, the first year of the operation of our Institution, that though our pupils succeeded in learning to read, the success seemed little worth, because there were but three books in the school. These were, a book of extracts from English authors, published in Paris; The Gospel of St. John, printed at Edinburgh, and one small volume from the same place. These were all the reading books for the blind then in existence in the English language; there was also a collection of mathematical diagrams, executed at York, England, and these made up the whole library of the blind. It was obvious that more books should be printed, but the first object seemed to be to find a method which would diminish their bulk and expense; for if the French, the Scotch, or the German methods had been followed, a volume like The New Testament would have formed twelve ponderous folios.

"After hesitating a long time whether to use a new phonetic alphabet, or a series of stenographic characters, or the common alphabet, I adopted the latter; not, however, without adhering to the opinion that one of the others must eventually be used in printing for the blind. Having decided to use the common alphabet, slightly varied, I endeavoured to reduce the bulk of each letter to the minimum size which the blind could feel.

"With this view all the unnecessary points, all the mere ornamental flourishes, were cut off; the interlinear space was reduced by making the bottom of the line straight; that is, carrying up such letters as g, p, etc., which run below the bottom of the line.