BEING BLIND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 21 June 1926, Page 8

BEING BLIND

The most trying part of being*blind —stone blind, as it is popularly called —is tlie__ complete and irremediable sense, of isolation (writes J. Macrae, in MlO Strand Magazine). Sight is probably the sense which means more to us 'than any other. Throng the eyes we get our ideas of the would ..around us, and of the size arid relation of one thing to another —colour and light and shade, the glory of the -day, the beauty of a moonlight'-night. A great part of our communication with other people is carried on by tho eyes; sometimes alone—more often as an .adjunct of speech and hearing. Normally our senses function together so harmoniously that we do not stop to Ihinlc of how they act, or their interdependent relations. Wc just use them. But is is a strange sensation to stand up in the centre of a crowd of people—to know that -hundreds of men and women:are round 5011, some of them almost touching you, and yet you cannot see them. It is a nerve-racking experience at first, even though one is conscious of the real friendliness of tho people. This probability is one of the sensations which conio only to those who lose their sight in later years, and not to those who were always blind, lo such as have never known vision, the world and all they know of it is a •world of their own. in which they, live, n,ov(f, and function normally. They 1 find nothing strange in it, for they have I been accustomed to it all their lives, and to no different conditions.