were used as object lessons, or perhaps we should say feeling-lessons. Specimens of bead-work, crotcheting and other kinds of work were also enclosed. The cabinet was surmounted by a bust of Laura Bridgman, the blind deaf-mute who has spent so many years here.

We were shown about by the principal teacher, himself a blind man, who had one of the most expressive and pleasant faces we ever saw. After visiting the school-rooms, the teachers, four competent and faithful young ladies, dismissed their pupils, and we were shown to the workshop where many of the children learn their trades. The business in hand was making brooms, and weaving the cane-bottoms of chairs, and here we were more surprised than ever to find the work so well and handily done with no eyes to see the work. Without delay we were taken thence to the chapel where the concert was to be holden, passing on our way many of the little music rooms each with its piano or organ where pupils were practising or tuning instruments.

Arrived at the chapel we found it already filled; a large room, the farther end filled with the grand organ. Two-thirds of the pupils, we should think, were among the performers. The band was led by Mr. Campbell, the blind teacher before mentioned. It being the day before the President's inauguration, they opened the concert with an Inauguration March. Eight or ten of the girls were members of the band and performed admirably with their clarionets and flutes. After this came a song by a young girl with a fine contralto voice, and following this "God save the Queen" with variations, played on the grand organ by a beautiful girl not more than sixteen. It was marvelous to see her graceful hands find the stops and vary the tones at her will, playing with such ease and correctness the complicated music, wholly from memory. An Italian song, displaying fine taste and culture, was sung by the sweet voice of the leading soprano, accompanied on the piano by the same musician. After this were other pieces rendered by the band, and sacred choruses by the singers. We must not forget Star Spangled Banner with its rolling drums, by a row of little fellows, as good drummers as we ever

heard. A young man who had been a pupil for many years, then favored us with piano music, and we know not when we have heard classical music played with such correctness, such appreciation, such feeling. The soul of the interpreter was in the music. We were more than ever astonished at the power of memory shown by these unfortunates. Every note of all this music to which we had been listening for two hours, and we know not how much more, written nowhere but in the mind. No excuse of never playing without notes offered here!

During the concert, Mr. Campbell illustrated their method of teaching music. They do not learn it by rote as is generally supposed, neither have they printed music with raised notes, as it seems to us they might have with so much less labor. They have music read to them,a measure at a time, and commit it to memory as they play it, not by rote, but literally by note. Mr. C. gave four measures to each part, with the time, rests, &c., each different from the other, and then called upon them to sing it, which they did readily and correctly. It would have been beyond the ability of any of us who

see.

After closing the concert with the Marseilles Hymn by the full band, we were left free to visit the building as we chose, and see the children at their recreations. Our great desire was to see Laura Bridgman, who was then at the institution, and who came down into one of the school-rooms at the request of some of the visitors. She was a small, frail-looking woman, between thirty and forty years of age, quick and nervous in her movements, with a very expressive face, although her eyes, which are in others the soul of the face, are covered with a green bandage, which she has always worn. is talking rapidly as we enter, though an interpreter, a blind lady of about the same age with a mild face and the sweetest of voices. She talks by making the letters of the deaf and dumb alphabet in the palm of the hand of her blind companion, and is addressed in the same way. The very muscles of her face move with nervous animation as she talks. She is asked to write her name for us and does so with great ease and rapidity, laying her paper over a little slab with sunk

She

en rules and following the pencil with her fingers. Her writing is really print, and is as fair and even. She wrote various mottoes with her name, as "The Lord is my life," "66 Peace be unto you,” “Be glory to the Lord." On expressing a fear that she would become tired, she answered quickly, “O, I can write fifty." We had no way of thanking her or communicating with her directly save by a touch of the hand; so impassable are the walls that separate her from all her kind. We have no words to express how the sight of this cheerful, patient, frail little woman, and the realization of her terrible affliction and isolation saddened us. Her cheerfulness was a wonder to us, as was that of all the blind we saw or with whom we spoke. The lady who conversed with her had been blind from her birth. When some one asked her if she had any conception of what it would be to see, she said with much feeling, "I suppose not;" and clasping her hands to her face with an impassioned gesture, added, "O, I don't like to think of light and color." Immediately afterward she added cheerfully, "but our affliction isn't the worst in the world." They seem to think they would much rather be blind than deaf, and a deaf- | mute always thinks it would be so much more terrible to be blind, fortunately for both.

The children were now talking in groups, and walking and running about the rooms with such freedom that we were almost unable to believe they did not see their way. We went into the basement to their printingroom, for the books here used are made in the building. The compositors were at work on Dickens' "Old Curiosity Shop," which is his own gift to the Institution, having left the money for printing it when he was here. The value of the gift can only be estimated when we realize how limited is the library of the blind, composed as it is almost exclusively of school and religious works,-how the child is shut out from the child's world of books. It is like the great, warm heart that conceived little Nell, to afford this rare pleasure to the hundreds of unfortunates to whom all his other glowing pages must be sealed books except as they are heard from the lips of others.

The setting of the type is the same as ours except that it is not reversed but set as it

The query was how the poor boy knew his handkerchief was soiled.

Returning to one of the school-rooms, the very most pleasing thing we saw was four blind boys playing euchre. How did they do it? with embossed cards, feeling the number and shape of the spots with their fingers. The king had an embossed square in the center; the queen a circle, and the jack none. They named each card as they laid it down; and of course the whole game had to be kept in memory. It would seem a hard way of enjoyment for us, but they took great comfort in it.

They enjoy the society of each other and have lively ga nes and amusements, but the constant segregation of the pupils is thought by those who have had their long and careful training to have its ill as well as good effects. They can be taught much better in classes, but aside from this it is found best to keep their intercourse with each other at its minimum and with ordinary people at its maximum. Hence since the buildings they have occupied thirty years need extensive outlays to make them even comfortable as a home, a bill is brought before the State leg. islature for an appropriation which, joined to the gifts of the people, shall enable them to build cottages where the pupils shall live in small numbers with families who shall have them in charge, and a central building or buildings where they shall recite and learn their trades. The project, with its reasons, was stated at the close of the concert by Dr. S. G. Howe, the secretary and life-long friend of the Institution, and is unfolded at length in the annual report of the officers. It appeals to the sympathy and active aid of

all who have the cause of these afflicted ones at heart.

There are now in the Institution one hundred and twenty-seven pupils. A large proportion of these are from Massachusetts, though they come from all parts of New England and a few from other States. They remain five years and longer if desired. The school course embraces all the branches taught in the best common schools, and most of the pupils come to understand them well; it is said, better than ordinary scholars, because they give closer mental application, love study and are precocious thinkers.

Music is made a specialty and is a great source of enjoyment. It is under the management of Mr. Campbell, the blind teacher, who is a very able musician. He has many assistants, the building is abundantly supplied with musical instruments, and the pupils have every advantage in hearing the best music which the city affords. Many of the graduates afterward support themselves by teaching music, by playing the organ and by tuning pianos. They are given a very laborious and thorough drill and are taught not to rely on their blindness and the sympathy that may be shown them as even mediocre performers, but to make themselves literally equal in their understanding of the art with those who see, and so command respectful consideration.

The work department is not so successful now as years ago, when there was less of labor-saving machinery and less competition. Special efforts will be made to enlarge their sphere of work and find new ways for them to earn their livelihood.

On the whole, the object of the institution is stated to be "to train up the pupils in virtuous and industrious habits; to give them useful knowledge; to cultivate and strengthen their mental and bodily powers by regular and constant exercises, adapted to their peculiar condition; to make them hardy and self-reliant, so that they may go out into the world determined not to eat the bread of charity; and after five or six years to return them to their homes prepared to find some way of being useful. The aim is not to segregate the blind into a class apart, but rather to prevent that consummation, which has too often followed the kind but unwise efforts of

those who would fain lighten, as far as they can, one of the heaviest burdens which men are called upon to bear."

The Cause of Temperance.

This long-agitated and much-needed reform is just now receiving in this city most efficient service in the championship of many of the leading clergy. A series of free lectures on this theme are in progress at Music Hall, and have already occupied several Sunday evenings, to the great satisfaction of the crowds who have listened to them. The one lately given by Dr. Miner on the theme, "Will Temperance Men Abide their own Principles?" was pronounced by one who heard it the greatest effort he has ever made on the subject, which is certainly giving it very high praise. The one given on the evening of March 13th, by Rev. W. H. H. Murray of Park St. Church, on "The Philosophy of the Temperance Reform," was a strong, bold, able statement of the subject in all its bearings, financial and political, as well as social. Between it and the African slave trade in its effects upon the nation, the lecturer ran a parallel which was very telling. If this lecture, the only one of the course we have heard, be a sample of them all, it is a discussion of the subject from a higher and broader platform than the customary standpoint of its advocates, and investing it with the earnest and solemn dignity that of right belong to it. We trust these lectures will be printed, and sown broadcast over the land. Like every other reform, the Temperance cause has been belittled by the puerile manner in which it has been handled. Its foes have sometimes been of its own household; and the floods of argumentative platitudes and weak sentiment, so rife in the past, have often disgusted the taste, and averted the attention of those who would otherwise have been its strongest helpers. An evil so gigantic as this, which is not only the Juggernaut of private happiness, and the almost exclusive source of individual crime, but which by its immense frauds boldly defies the laws of the land, and even enters and corrupts the halls of legislation, must be met with a commensurate earnestness and valor.

We long ago lost confidence in any and

all devices of moral suasion as adequate to the task of righting this monstrous wrong. Nothing but the strong arm of the law can throttle it. The Good Templars, Sons of Temperance and like organizations, may do their little good in a private way, but they will become powers only when they can control votes. When it comes to be generally understood that legislatlon is the issue on which this evil must stand or fall, that it is a

national and not simply a personal matter, may we hope to see the reform assume its just proportions, and be worthily and efficiently carried forward.

Our Book Table.

The American Unitarian Association have just published a memoir of James P. Walker, with selections from his writings. The Memoir is a graceful tribute of friendship to one whose Christian character and zeal in the Sunday School cause endeared him to all Christians as well as the church to which he belonged. It is the record of a beautiful and consistent life, in weakness clothed upon with divine strength, and in misfortune crowned with the highest success. It is sad to contemplate the going out from our midst of such a devoted and affectionate and constant soul ere it had reached its meridian of strength and usefulness; the frail body bending under the burdens laid upon it by the too willing mind.

We remember the pale, earnest, spiritual face as we last saw it, in a mass meeting of children in Chicago, the rapt manner in which the children listened to his delightful talk, and the impression made on all by his benignant presence. A touching record is left in the Memoir before us, of this meeting and others connected with it, of his pleasure in them and the congratulations he received; which calls forth this fervent exclamation, "My heart swells with thankfulness to God that I am not to fail utterly in this world, but may do some good in it." Alas, even then his brow was paling under the touch of the destroyer's finger, and after a few months of increasing weakness, he was called from the midst of the labors of his love.

The selections from his writings, especially his addresses to children, are characteristic in their simplicity and beauty. To the

thousands of children who heard his voice while living, these addresses will be a precious legacy. Like all works of this nature, the Memoir will be especially grateful to the relatives and many friends of Mr. Walker, by whom as a friend, a Sabbath School worker and a Christian gentleman, he will be held in life long and tender remembrance.

Elias Howe, the publisher of the recent compilation, "The Pianist's Matinee," has just issued the initiatory number of a new enterprise, the "Musical Monthly," containing thirty two pages of sheet music in paper covers, the ordinary price of which would be five or six dollars, for thirty-five cents. We are hardly competent to pronounce whether the excellence of this music makes its remarkable cheapness an object, but at first glance we see that it bears good names, and among the songs are several of decided merit. We might particularize "A thousand greetings to our friends," "O, would I were a bird," and "My mother's portrait." The number contains eleven instrumental pieces and ten songs with piano accompaniments. Among the composers are Strauss, Godfrey, C. Faust, Gungl, and Kaula, names which of themselves fix the quality of the composition. Our musical friends will doubtless avail themselves of the advantage offered by these monthly publications.

FATHER GABRIELLE'S FAIRY and STORIES FOR EVA, are two more of the Prize Series of which three have before been published by the A. U. Association. The firstnamed is by our valued contributor, Mrs. Mary G. Peckham, and is a charming story of child-life in Normandy, among the simple peasant folk of the coast, into which is woven enough of romantic and unusual incident to make it fascinating to our young readers. It is told in a neat and simple style, with a happy unconsciousness of "writing small,” a virtue the lack of which spoils many a wellplanned Sabbath School book. It is a pure, artless, healthful little tale which it will do our little people good to read. time, as a religious book for Schools, we feel a lack in it. The "little Fairy," the fisherman's adopted child, when questioned as to what makes her good, why she delights in kind deeds, invariably answers in such phrases as these, "The trees

At the same our Sabbath

and the flowers whisper of the good God," "The waves sing to me of the goodness of God,” “I should not hear the voices of the fields and woods if I had a bad heart." Very poetical and beautiful, but rather a subtle inspiration to an ordinary child; while there is scarcel- a recognition, in the book, of that supreme source of inspiration, the word of God and the gospel of Christ. This ignoring of the central sun of truth and goodness we should hardly have expected from the author of the Invocation published in our January number.

The companion book is made up of half a dozen stories for girls very pleasantly told. They breathe the same spirit of reverence for truth and goodness, and are perhaps less open to the above criticism, although being stories of American life and having to do with such different circumstances, the two works can hardly be justly compared with each other in this respect. Each of these books has several illustrations.

TWELVE NIGHTS IN A HUNTER'S CAMP, just issued by Lee & Shepard, is a book for the young quite out of the ordinary line. Under the guise of stories told at a campfire, where a company of sportsmen spend their summer holidays on Swan Lake in the Iowa regions of the Mississippi, it gives us the life story of "the General" from his own lips; 66 a truthful record of the actual life of a real person." And the General, Willard Barrows, for many years a government surveyor in the then unknown wilderness of the west, had a life sufficiently full of startling incident and daring exploits and romantic adventures and great successes, to make its story stranger than fiction. There is not often printed a more excellent book for the young; combining truth with all that is most brilliant and fascinating in fiction.

The continuous narrative of personal adventure told by the General at the evening camp-fire is varied by the daily story of the excursion and picturesque descriptions of life among the woods and streams. This is not the least enjoyable part of the volume. The author, a brother of the General and a clergyman of Reading, Mass., when not a hunter in the western wilds, is in enthusiastic and loving sympathy with his theme, and his words have a relish of the breezy

forests and the broad lakes. Hear the style in which he talks to his brother clergymen, on less friendly terms with the rough natural soil:

"It is of little use to try to work a powerful engine in a weak frame. You, a preachquate to the effort of seeing the cream rise er, feel poorly on Monday, and about adeon a pan of new milk; a part of this feeling is professionally imaginary, and suggestive that you performed a wonderful and exhausting work the day before. Some clergymen are so able that they can preach but one sermon a day and have no evening meetings or pastoral work, and so must have vacations lengthy and often; and if very feeble and in a wealthy society, they absolutely need a trip to foreign lands.

Others are really weary on Monday. Dear Sirs, you should go to Dr. Nimrod's Water Cure-a leaky tent and take his prescriptions, to wit: the Walton fish-hook every other day alternating with number six shot. This is precisely what the fable means about Antæus and Hercules. Antæus was the son of Terra and Neptune-land and water. He came of good stock- one of the first families.' Like Brougham and Barrow and others, he was famed for wrestling and was more than a match, for Hercules, because as often as he touched the earth his mother-she renewed his strength. Then Hercules, discovering the secret, lifted him up in the air and squeezed him to death. That is, the Rev. Mr. Antaeus became very averse to the ground. He disliked a cane, and a spade, and a fishing rod, and a gun, and a prairiehay bed, and a birch canoe. He allowed himself to be lifted up into a carriage and an easy chair in his study and into the seventh story of a fashionable hotel, and so his life was squeezed out of him. If he would have kept his toes on the ground during vacation!

I meet the Rev. Antæus frequently in the last stages of his wrestling. He has a thin girl's hand, a sallow, flabby cheek, a stooping gait and a Chinese foot, and the latest issue of the prolific press in his hand. Poor man! there is just one chance for you, dyspeptic and dying. Come down to the ground and let your parents, Neptune and Terra, nurse you. Cook your own trout on the Parmachene, eat moose-beef and venison by your own camp-fire in New Brunswick, bear's meat on the Adirondacks and grouse on the

Iowa prairies. Then in the next match I will bet on you against Hercules.

But you deem it undignified in scholarly men to come down to the earth in this way. Better so than to come under the earth with semi-suicidal dignity. Anything, almost, that will enable you to throw Hercules. PerRobert Boyle's Angling Improved to Spirhaps you have religious scruples. Then read itua Uses' forty-two pages royal quarto.