Library Collections: Document: Full Text

It is a serious fact that the Industrial departments in our State schools for the Blind are sadly neglected. Boys and girls are graduated from these institutions of learning and are then expected to sustain themselves with almost no business training whatever. They are, in truth, equipped with a common education, without any practical sensibility, and with a wild thirst for some ideal function in life. It is no wonder to a student of such conditions, that our streets and thoroughfares are not unfrequented by sightless organists. However due credit must be given those instructors and trustees who spent much effort along the line of industry for the Blind. For instance, in some schools the boys are taught the broom, hammock and mattress trades, and the girls learn how to do fancy crocheting, plain sewing, carpet weaving, etc. But this favorable condition does not exist in many institutions and where it does, it as made secondary rather than a primary matter.

Nevertheless, home teaching has much to do with both the blind and the sighted, and if every over-generous mother would but pause a moment to weigh in the balance her greatest duty with her fondest sympathy, how much more useful and how much happier would our sightless daughters be. The gravest blunder a mother can make is that of teaching her child indolence, and this she does when she, through fear of some unforeseen injury denies to it the privilege of an active physical service.

An Appeal to Parents of Sightless Children

Parents let your sightless children know and feel that they have their part in the world's field of action. Send your boys to the field, and keep your girls diligently employed. Active thought is usually good thought, mind awake is healthy, and muscle in service renders true service to the physical organism. Do not, out of your sympathy for them make them unhappy sluggards with languid thoughts and restless activity, who finally become imbeciles or paupers. Allow your blind children equal advantages with yourselves to show the world what they can do if they may. Let them feel that they have an earnest responsibility in life, and they will appreciate this respect and confidence far more than your unwise sympathy, and meet it with ready effort.

(A Frequent Question.)

Some days ago I was asked, "How is a sightless woman practically useful." My reply was, "In most every womanly line." This is not an infrequent question, however, and I will beg leave to be personal in giving an illustration in living reality.

(A Specific Illustration.)

In all my acquaintance, I have never met a more selfpoised womanly woman, ready for all emergencies, keen in all perceptions, alive to all business ventures, and yet purely emotional and aesthetic, than Mrs. (. . .?) Elmaker Logan of Kansas City, Kas. She has been totally blind since her tenth year, and since my acquaintance with her, I have found her to be one of the most perfect home-makers I ever knew.

Some years ago when Mrs. Logan was a polished school girl, and a prominent member of social circles, many of her friends believed her to be too diversified in talent ever to become a steady settled house-wife, but Prof. W.J. Logan, then principal of the Kansas School for the Blind seemed to feel differently about the matter, when, after graduating her in 1893 he asked her to link her future with his own.

At the time of the marriage Prof. Logan held a promising place in the schools of Kansas City, and it was deemed wise that the happy couple settle there. Hence they purchased a home where the wedding took place June 6th, 1895 and Mrs. Logan began life with a determination to be happy, and thereby make life enjoyable for others. This is a resolution which sighted women often forget to keep but I have my first time to hear her enter a protest that was not wholly just.

From this spirit of harmony and good will springs Mrs. Logan's industrial impulse, the impulse to do and see done, hence she is here and there over her house, dispensing with her wifely duties as a true wife can. In a material way her delight is in cooking, especially desert (sic) dainties. Her home-made light bread and biscuits, her light puffy cakes with their various delicious fillings, her puddings and pies are most surely a pleasure to the guests at her frequent home dinners. These aae (sic) things that may seem impossible so an uninformed mind but they are just what make Mrs. Logan happy, because she is albe (sic) to feel that she is not a burden to those around her. Aside from her kitchen work she does chamber work well, and is an admirer of neatly arranged parlors. Mrs. Logan's greatest pride lies in caring for her daughter, Alleen, in whom rests the fondest hopes and aspirations. She is a wonderful mother being strict yet kind, and ever patient.

(A Pretty Home Picture.)

One of the most beatiful (sic) home pictures I ever beheld I saw one Autumn evening in the sitting room of the Logan home. It was after the Professor's school hours and he was seated before the fire reading the current news from the daily papers to his wife, while she was busily engaged crocheting her little child an artistic wool jacket. To perfect the scene, the little daughter of eighteen months sat at their feet playing with her kitten, and the occasional fondling of a devoted parent gave a rich "Be of good cheer" spirit of expression to the whole.

Page 2:

Mrs. Logan does much plain sewing and takes great pleasure in fancy crochet work of all kinds. Aside from this, her qualifications as an entertainer are brilliant. At the time of her graduation from the institution she was considered by the musical instructor and criticising public, by far the finest performer on the pianoforte in the school; and in this is she well known over much of Kansas, and many parts of Missouri and Nebraska. Her high musical ability wins her many cultured friends and the fact that they come to her with a sense of extreme pleasure rather than curiosity is an appreciated compliment to Mrs. Logan. In many lines of Literature this energetic mind is well versed and she is fully competent to converse intelligently on any subject from science or poetry to the humor of a Dickens character, and from the broad musical conceptions of a Chopin or a Wagner, down to the latest rag time. Her manner is that of perfect ease; and Prof. Logan has said that he has ever been proud to introduce her to people in any station in life, no matter how lofty that station may be because of her great womanly selfpossession. In all business matters Prof. Logan consults with his wife, and finds in her a worthy confident, a wise councilor, and a willing helper.

(Domestic Arrangements.)

My interested readers you may wish to ask why does not this charming little lady hire a house maid, but she herself would frankly reply that she needed none. She has her grandmother with her always, and they are very happy laboring for a mutual good.

Not long ago the demand of a sad circumstance brought Mrs. Logan to become a first class hospital nurse, and the skill with which she, while attending a six months old child, gave electrical treatments of two hours each to a partially paralyzed father, and admistered (sic) to the wants of a mother who had recently fractured her right arm was wonderful indeed. For months this tension strained every nerve, and though her affliction was inconvenient in many ways, yet she never found anything which she knew to be her duty to be impossible.

As a practical house-keeper Mrs. Logan is undoubtedly a success, since she can do any line of domestic work whatever, -- such as cooking, sweeping, dusting, sewing, mending and washing and ironing. Of the latter, she does little however, because like many sighted women she hires all laundry work done and it is a wonder to many that she is capable of doing these things, things that the public deems impossible.

If others so afflicted had but the desire and encouragement to (. . .?) forward with a purpose to make life useful, how much brighter the world would seem, and how much less beggary would confront them.

The tidal wave of progress is reaching far out at present. The public is beginning to see that being blind no longer means being an imbecile or idiot, and eventually we hope our worthy instructors will come to know that all our (. . .?) sightless boys and girls ask is for an equal chance with the sighted (. . .?) this being given, ability and (. . .?) will every speak for itself.

Lillian M. Hil(?)