VOLUNTARY COPYISTS FOR THE BLIND. [To no Banos or vas
..SrscrAron."1
SIa,—All friends of the blind will welcome the articles and letters with which the Spectator has called attention to the splendid work inaugurated by Mr: C. A. Pearson, and which the great sum collected- by means of the Lord. Mayor's Fund will bring into being. There need be no alarm lest this collets, Lion-will deplete the funds of other institutions for the blind, as your correspondent of April 4th feared; it will more probably augment them by giving publicity to the needs of the blind and turning men's minds to the numerous schemes for their assistance. But the present is surely also the time to pay a tribute to the many hundreds of devoted men and women who for years past have given their brain-power and their time to the work of providing, not cheap, but free litera- ture for the blind, by laboriously copying by hand into Braille type all kinds of books, from Plato's Republic in the original Greek to the latest novel by Miss Marie Corelli. In the early days of the National-Institute for the Blind, when it was still known as " The British and Foreign Blind Association," a band of enthusiastic volunteer copyists was attached to it. The National Lending. Library for the Blind in Bayswater, which has over 18,000 volumes in raised type (corresponding to about 6,250 printed volumes), has another such company of five hundred voluntary copyists. The grand collection of books for the University courses at-the Free Library in Oxford, which has helped many a blind student to take an Honours Degree, has been almost entirely copied by volunteers.. That tran- scribing into Braille is no sinecure may be gathered from the fact that Dombey and Son makes sixteen volumes, and occu- pies 36 x.14 x 11 inches of shelf-space. Yet, when a short time ago a blind youth in Glasgow, attending a course of University Extension Lectures, was anxious to have a copy of Baizac's Euyinie Grande& it was transcribed into Braille for him in time to put him on an equality with the sighted students of the class. In our admiration and gratitude to our new generous and powerful patrons, let us remember also the debt-we owe to the " unnamed "rank-and-file," who, having neither silver nor gold, have yet given what they had—the work of mind and hands and the time of their often scanty leisure. In our deep, indeed overwhelming, gratitude for the flood of light so soon to brighten the darkness, let us not forget to pay a tribute to those nameless hundreds who, with patient hands, have lit their little tapers and have humbly carried their gleams to cheer coantlesa overshadowed lives.—I am,
[Our correspondent desires to remain anonymous. Were her name to be published, it would be recognized among all friends of the blind as that of one of the most generous and self-sacrificing of workers in their cause.—En. Spectatord
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