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It may be well for us to consider in this connection the question whether it is right and best to found and support a separate college or university for the exclusive use of the blind, or, it if is not, where their higher education should be prosecuted.

Experience, reflection and sound philosophy all lead to the conclusion, that persons suffering under a common infirmity are liable to certain unfavorable and undesirable consequences, flowing from their abnormal condition. These are undoubtedly aggravated by the close association of the sufferers in considerable numbers and for a great length of time, while they are lessened by constant intercourse with ordinary and normal persons. The reasons for this are obvious. The loss of sight is not merely a bodily infirmity; it effects all sides of the human organism, the intellectual and moral no less than the physical.

It is beyond question that the largest possibilities of the success of this class of our fellow-men in whatever they may undertake to do depend upon their ability to enter on the arena of the competitions of life with those whom they will naturally meet in the home, the neighborhood, the social and religious assemblies and in the world of business.

For these reasons it is of the utmost importance that, as soon as our graduates are fully prepared and thoroughly fitted for a course of higher academic and scientific instruction or of training for one of the liberal professions or for a business career, they should be scattered among the ordinary institutions of learning and not gathered again into another sort of receptacle of darkness and gloom, established for the special benefit of sightless persons, which may be known by the name of colleges and universities for them. Indeed, instead of a blessing, it would be an unmitigated misfortune for the blind to be kept by themselves for an additional period of four or five years, apart from those of their fellow-men among whom the work of their life lies. The best and most vital interests demand that they should be placed in one of the leading colleges or best professional and commercial schools, in which every state abounds, and should be thrown with seeing young men and women. They must be put in a position to compare themselves with others of their own age and to measure accurately their ability so that they may avoid the fatal error of overestimating or underrating it. They must be brought in touch with the great forces of the world, which make progress and civilization possible, and learn something of the part that each has to play in the drama of human existence. Whether they desire to devote themselves to commercial pursuits, or to become teachers, ministers, lawyers, business men, or practitioners of massage, they must be educated and taught and trained side by side with those among whom they are destined to exercise their calling or vocation, and must acquire a knowledge of the practical affairs of life and of the manners, notions and usages of society. They must come in contact with the great and moving world and hear and know more of its customs and interests and shape their own mental habits and modes of thinking and motives of action more in accordance with those of the people with whom they are to live after the completion of their education.

In no institution of learning, which may be built and maintained solely for the benefit of a class of children and youth laboring under a common physical disability, can any of these precious, practical lessons be learned. Hence the adsolute (sic) necessity for funds to provide for as many scholarships as eligible candidates for higher education may require.