LIGHT FOR THE BLIND. BOOKS IN BRAILLE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 57, 4 September 1909, Page 10

LIGHT FOR THE BLIND. BOOKS IN BRAILLE.

A Sunday march to Trafalgar-square in order to plead for a. Blind Aid Bill, and an invitation to a garden fete at Aubrey House, Campden Hill (writes Clarence Rook, in the London Chronicle), turned my thoughts to an inconspicuous entrance in Queens-road, BayswateT — number 125. There are about sixty thousand blind people in this happy island — not enough to turn an election. ißut have you ever considered the case of the minority? The blind, with one sense cut off, the darkness of the eye? As a blind man left to yourself, you wouid miss. . . . Good gracious! 'What would you miss in light and colour and reading ! I suppose the loss of sight is the worst thing that can 'happen to a competent man, unless, as the late Air. Fawcett, he can afford to keep a reader. And yet there are men who surmount the difficulty, and insist that one sense shall do double duty. To the deaf-mute it is the sense of sight that is drawn on ; and does not fail. The blind man is feeling his way always to the light. And you may 'be interested to know of thousands of blind eyes turned upon that modest entrance in Queens-road, Bayswater, fingers fumbling for the light of literature. For, you must remember, the blind man (who does not turn an election) is shut off from all printed matter, from the Book of Genesis to this column. Unless . . . unless some one builds the bridge between the senses, and turns sight into terms of touch. A (LENDING OBEiARY. Let me conduct you through that modest entrance. You are a blind man, or a man ashamed of your misuse of sight. Once in the National Lending iLibrary for the Blind you shed your eyes, and quite believe iMi«s Austin, who [refuses to be blind, and reads with her eyes the pin pricks that the blind man ihas sent as a letter. But the man's reading is carried out entirely by the sense of toach, and the volumes that line the walls of t"h,e long ground-floor room appeal direct from the sensitive fingers to the brain. Take down a volume. It is a big tome, bound solemnly in black — the first volume of "David Coppenfield." Open it. You find thick buff paper, every page pricked with the dots — those dots as unintelligible to the ignorant as decimal points were to iLord Randolph Churchill. "'Braille" is "a system of embossed writing formed by using all the possible combinations of six dots." That is the official definition. Hugh Mailer said that a knowledge of the letters of the alphabet, leads to all you need know. Pass your* fingers over those combinations of dots and reflect that the blind man has but to learn the signalling, and six dots will bring him into touch with "David Copperficld." .Ranged along the shelves axe the volumes, and you will realise the necessity for economy of space when I tell you that "David Copperfield" fills nineteen volumes, and the .Bible cannot be compressed into forty. BLIND BOOKMAKERS. The literature of the world is always being drawn upon and translated into terms of touch, and 'you may see something of the process if you plunge into the long cellar where sheets of the yellow paper aro hanging to dry from their bath of shellac, or ascend to tha upper floor where correctors of proofs are at their work upon the new records that have arrived. And herb you can see a woman with eyes, a board, and a bit of paper correcting the pinpricks of a recorder, who may be an amateur or may be blind. And if I may bore you with a few statistics, let me assure you that the literature of the blind is provided from this one centre mainly by voluntary workers aided by those who are themselves blind. Provincial libraries subscribe — about a score of them, and in the long cellar there is the packing of the three volumes /in the hope that the blind reader will return them in time for the reader who wants the other five. But the transcription is done in manuscript. No one has yet invented a Hnotype machine that will convey printed matter to those who canjiot see. Every book for the blind is carefully pin-pricked by voluntary workers who .can see. (This is an exaggeration. Many books for tho blind are mechankally printed' in Braille.) There are women who can, and will, translate a tojid volume in a month. And the lending library has some 350 writers who are always turning sight into terms of touch. For once we return to the age of the manuscript. The reproduction of th& book in Braille has given employment to the blind who can feel, and a second and third edition from Quoen's-road, Bayswater, is not unusual. MUSIC FOR THE BLIND. From a corner shelf of the cellar at Queens-road Miss Austin drew a slim volume that I did not recognise. The volumes < stretched along the shelf. And the pin-pricks — though I had acquired some skill in the six dots and their manoeuvres — conveyed nothing to me. Then came the explanation. This was music. Now the blind man cannot paint pictures. But in his darkness he can listen to music, imagine it, make it. You may be blind as Milton, deaf as Beethoven, and havo music in your soul. The blind man has often surprised us by his music-memory, and for the blind tne office' of piano-tuner has been generally recommended. Few people are without a blind church organist within call. And of these the Lending Library for the Blind has taken care. On those shelves are something over two thousand pieces of music, from oratorio to dancb music. And with , excellent foresight the library has translated the pick of the wsfltzes and barn-dances, since the blind musician, is often called to the ballroom. Here, too, comes the kindly help of the amateur in blindness, for the transcription of music into Braille is an art in itself, and demands a worker who is both a skilled musician and a skilled Braillist. WHAT THE BLIND READ. What do these blind men read when they have their choice of the three hundred books sent out every day from the London centre? They are put in touch with the works of our novelists, and the sacks and baskets in the basement at Queens-road will meet a demand for the latest fictionists. But — it was possibly due to the dim cellar of the struggling lighthouse for the blind that the answer came to bring light to the searcher who thought he had eyes. You have seen the blind man, heard him, made way for him as he taps his way along the street, eyes ahead, unseeing. It may have occurred to you that the blind man has time to think, when the pain of sight is refused him. What does he think about? A rifle of the shelves of the Lending Library for the Blind assures me that the thoughts of the blind are long thoughts. If I may bore you with a final statistic, let it be said that the next blind man you in the street is probably a subscribei- — or a pensioner — of the Lending Library, and as he taps his way, eyes ahead, unseeing, the book he is going to borrow and read with his fingers is a work on astronomy.