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IN AID OF THE BLIND
ADDRESS AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION FOR
PROMOTING THE INTERESTS OF THE BLIND AT THE WALDORF ASTORIA,
MARCH 29, 1906
If you detect any awkwardness in my movements and infelicities in my
conduct I will offer the explanation that I never presided at a meeting
of any kind before in my life, and that I do find it out of my line.
I supposed I could do anything anybody else could, but I recognize that
experience helps, and I do feel the lack of that experience. I don't
feel as graceful and easy as I ought to be in order to impress an
audience. I shall not pretend that I know how to umpire a meeting like
this, and I shall just take the humble place of the Essex band.
There was a great gathering in a small New England town, about twenty-
five years ago. I remember that circumstance because there was something
that happened at that time. It was a great occasion. They gathered in
the militia and orators and everybody from all the towns around. It was
an extraordinary occasion.
The little local paper threw itself into ecstasies of admiration and
tried to do itself proud from beginning to end. It praised the orators,
the militia, and all the bands that came from everywhere, and all this in
honest country newspaper detail, but the writer ran out of adjectives
toward the end. Having exhausted his whole magazine of praise and
glorification, he found he still had one band left over. He had to say
something about it, and he said: "The Essex band done the best it could."
I am an Essex band on this occasion, and I am going to get through as
well as inexperience and good intentions will enable me. I have got all
the documents here necessary to instruct you in the objects and
intentions of this meeting and also of the association which has called
the meeting. But they are too voluminous. I could not pack those
statistics into my head, and I had to give it up. I shall have to just
reduce all that mass of statistics to a few salient facts. There are too
many statistics and figures for me. I never could do anything with
figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished
anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only
mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in
that, as soon as I reach nine times seven--
[Mr. Clemens lapsed into deep thought for a moment. He was trying to
figure out nine times seven, but it was a hopeless task, and he turned to
St. Clair McKelway, who sat near him. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer,
and the speaker resumed:]
I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right
with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage
a statistic.
"This association for the--"
[Mr. Clemens was in another dilemma. Again he was obliged to turn to Mr.
McKelway.]
Oh yes, for promoting the interests of the blind. It's a long name. If
I could I would write it out for you and let you take it home and study
it, but I don't know how to spell it. And Mr. Carnegie is down in
Virginia somewhere. Well, anyway, the object of that association which
has been recently organized, five months ago, in fact, is in the hands of
very, very energetic, intelligent, and capable people, and they will push
it to success very surely, and all the more surely if you will give them
a little of your assistance out of your pockets.
The intention, the purpose, is to search out all the blind and find work
for them to do so that they may earn, their own bread. Now it is dismal
enough to be blind--it is dreary, dreary life at best, but it can be
largely ameliorated by finding something for these poor blind people to
do with their hands. The time passes so heavily that it is never day or
night with them, it is always night, and when they have to sit with
folded hands and with nothing to do to amuse or entertain or employ their
minds, it is drearier and drearier.
And then the knowledge they have that they must subsist on charity, and
so often reluctant charity, it would renew their lives if they could have
something to do with their hands and pass their time and at the same time
earn their bread, and know the sweetness of the bread which is the result
of the labor of one's own hands. They need that cheer and pleasure. It
is the only way you can turn their night into day, to give them happy
hearts, the only thing you can put in the place of the blessed sun. That
you can do in the way I speak of.
Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss
the light. Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old--
their lives are unendingly dreary. But they can be taught to use their
hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries. That
association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
has taught its blind to make many things. They make them better than
most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.
The goods they make are readily salable. People like them. And so they
are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer. They pass
their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.
What this association needs and wants is $15,000. The figures are set
down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would
not be here. And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you
will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank
which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or
some time. Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and
that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.
I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything
better than that of getting money out of people who don't want to part
with it. It is always for good objects, of course. This is the plan:
When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and
you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as
not. Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to
split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or
fifty, or whatever the sum maybe. Let him contribute ten or twenty a
year. He doesn't feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him
to contribute a large amount. When you get used to it you would rather
contribute than borrow money.
I tried it in Helen Keller's case. Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897
when I was in London and said: "The gentleman who has been so liberal in
taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in
his will, and now they don't know what to do." They were proposing to
raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400
or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful
teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy. I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said:
"Go on, get up your fund. It will be slow, but if you want quick work,
I propose this system," the system I speak of, of asking people to
contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever
they please, and he would find there wouldn't be any difficulty, people
wouldn't feel the burden of it. And he wrote back saying he had raised
the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon. We
would like to do something just like that to-night. We will take as many
checks as you care to give. You can leave your donations in the big room
outside.
I knew once what it was to be blind. I shall never forget that
experience. I have been as blind as anybody ever was for three or four
hours, and the sufferings that I endured and the mishaps and the
accidents that are burning in my memory make my sympathy rise when I feel
for the blind and always shall feel. I once went to Heidelberg on an
excursion. I took a clergyman along with me, the Rev. Joseph Twichell,
of Hartford, who is still among the living despite that fact. I always
travel with clergymen when I can. It is better for them, it is better
for me. And any preacher who goes out with me in stormy weather and
without a lightning rod is a good one. The Reverend Twichell is one of
those people filled with patience and endurance, two good ingredients for
a man travelling with me, so we got along very well together. In that
old town they have not altered a house nor built one in 1500 years. We
went to the inn and they placed Twichell and me in a most colossal
bedroom, the largest I ever saw or heard of. It was as big as this room.
I didn't take much notice of the place. I didn't really get my bearings.
I noticed Twichell got a German bed about two feet wide, the kind in
which you've got to lie on your edge, because there isn't room to lie on
your back, and he was way down south in that big room, and I was way up
north at the other end of it, with a regular Sahara in between.
We went to bed. Twichell went to sleep, but then he had his conscience
loaded and it was easy for him to get to sleep. I couldn't get to sleep.
It was one of those torturing kinds of lovely summer nights when you hear
various kinds of noises now and then. A mouse away off in the southwest.
You throw things at the mouse. That encourages the mouse. But I
couldn't stand it, and about two o'clock I got up and thought I would
give it up and go out in the square where there was one of those tinkling
fountains, and sit on its brink and dream, full of romance.
I got out of bed, and I ought to have lit a candle, but I didn't think of
it until it was too late. It was the darkest place that ever was. There
has never been darkness any thicker than that. It just lay in cakes.
I thought that before dressing I would accumulate my clothes. I pawed
around in the dark and found everything packed together on the floor
except one sock. I couldn't get on the track of that sock. It might
have occurred to me that maybe it was in the wash. But I didn't think of
that. I went excursioning on my hands and knees. Presently I thought,
"I am never going to find it; I'll go back to bed again." That is what I
tried to do during the next three hours. I had lost the bearings of that
bed. I was going in the wrong direction all the time. By-and-by I came
in collision with a chair and that encouraged me.
It seemed to me, as far as I could recollect, there was only a chair here
and there and yonder, five or six of them scattered over this territory,
and I thought maybe after I found that chair I might find the next one.
Well, I did. And I found another and another and another. I kept going
around on my hands and knees, having those sudden collisions, and finally
when I banged into another chair I almost lost my temper. And I raised
up, garbed as I was, not for public exhibition, right in front of a
mirror fifteen or sixteen feet high.
I hadn't noticed the mirror; didn't know it was there. And when I saw
myself in the mirror I was frightened out of my wits. I don't allow any
ghosts to bite me, and I took up a chair and smashed at it. A million
pieces. Then I reflected. That's the way I always do, and it's
unprofitable unless a man has had much experience that way and has clear
judgment. And I had judgment, and I would have had to pay for that
mirror if I hadn't recollected to say it was Twichell who broke it.
Then I got down, on my hands and knees and went on another exploring
expedition.
As far as I could remember there were six chairs in that Oklahoma, and
one table, a great big heavy table, not a good table to hit with your
head when rushing madly along. In the course of time I collided with
thirty-five chairs and tables enough to stock that dining-room out there.
It was a hospital for decayed furniture, and it was in a worse condition
when I got through with it. I went on and on, and at last got to a place
where I could feel my way up, and there was a shelf. I knew that wasn't
in the middle of the room. Up to that time I was afraid I had gotten out
of the city.
I was very careful and pawed along that shelf, and there was a pitcher of
water about a foot high, and it was at the head of Twichell's bed, but I
didn't know it. I felt that pitcher going and I grabbed at it, but it
didn't help any and came right down in Twichell's face and nearly drowned
him. But it woke him up. I was grateful to have company on any terms.
He lit a match, and there I was, way down south when I ought to have been
back up yonder. My bed was out of sight it was so far away. You needed
a telescope to find it. Twichell comforted me and I scrubbed him off and
we got sociable.
But that night wasn't wasted. I had my pedometer on my leg. Twichell
and I were in a pedometer match. Twichell had longer legs than I. The
only way I could keep up was to wear my pedometer to bed. I always walk
in my sleep, and on this occasion I gained sixteen miles on him. After
all, I never found that sock. I never have seen it from that day to
this. But that adventure taught me what it is to be blind. That was one
of the most serious occasions of my whole life, yet I never can speak of
it without somebody thinking it isn't serious. You try it and see how
serious it is to be as the blind are and I was that night.
[Mr. Clemens read several letters of regret. He then introduced Joseph
H. Choate, saying:]
It is now my privilege to present to you Mr. Choate. I don't have to
really introduce him. I don't have to praise him, or to flatter him.
I could say truly that in the forty-seven years I have been familiarly
acquainted with him he has always been the handsomest man America has
ever produced. And I hope and believe he will hold the belt forty-five
years more. He has served his country ably, faithfully, and brilliantly.
He stands at the summit, at the very top in the esteem and regard of his
countrymen, and if I could say one word which would lift him any higher
in his countrymen's esteem and affection, I would say that word whether
it was true or not. |
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