Blind People Who Won Fame.

Sightless but Courageous Men and Women Who Became Distinguished Professors, Authors, Inventors, Soldiers and Athletes—One Served as Postmaster-General of Great Britain.

Miss Helen Keller's attainments, her emergence from a life in which there was neither light nor sound to a communicative relationship with others, are a marvel of the present day. The best things have all become hers through the single medium of touch. The compound obstacles which she has had to overcome make her case, perhaps, the most remarkable on record.

There have been, however, many famous blind persons in history. Stengel mentions a young cabinet-maker of Ingolstadt, who, having lost his sight, amused himself by carving wooden pepper-mills, using a common knife. His want of sight seemed to be no impediment to his manual dexterity.

Sir Kenelm Digby has given particulars about a gifted blind tutor. He surpassed the ablest players at chess; at long distances he shot arrows with such precision as almost never to miss his mark; he constantly went abroad without a guide; he regularly took his place at table, and ate with such dexterity that it was impossible to perceive that he was blind; when any one spoke to him for the first time he was able to tell with certainty his stature and the form of his body; and when his pupils recited in his presence he knew in what situation and attitude they were.

Uldaric Schomberg, born in Germany toward the beginning of the seventeenth century, lost his sight at the age of three years; but as he grew up he applied himself to the study of belles-lettres, which he afterward professed with credit at Altorf, at Leipsic, and at Hamburg.

Bourcheau de Valbonais, born at Grenoble in 1651, became blind when very young—soon after the naval combat at Solbaye, where he had been present. But this accident did not prevent him from publishing the "History of Dauphiny," in two volumes, folio. He had made profound researches into the history of his province.

Mastered Chemistry and Mathematics.

Dr. Nicholas Sanderson, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, was one of the most remarkable men of his time. Born in 1682, at a small town in the County of York, he died at Cambridge in 1739, at the age of fifty-six years. He invented a table for teaching arithmetic palpably to the blind.

Dr. Henry Moyes professed the Newtonian philosophy, which he taught with considerable success as an itinerant lecturer. He was also a good chemist, a respectable mathematician, and a tolerable musician.

Herr Phefel, of Colmar, who lost his sight when very young, composed a great deal of poetry, consisting chiefly of fables, some of which were translated into French. Among the pupils of this learned blind man were Prince Schwartzenberg and Prince Eisemberg. He died at Colmar, 1809.

Weissemburgh, of Mannheim, became blind at the age of seven years. He wrote perfectly, and read with characters which he had imagined for his own use. He was an excellent geographer, and composed maps and globes, which he employed both in studying and teaching this science. He was the inventor of an arithmetical table differing but little from that of Sanderson.

An Extraordinary Questioner.

The blind man of Puiseaux must be known to all who read Diderot's celebrated "Lettres sur les Aveugles." He was the son of a professor of philosophy in the University of Paris, and had attended with advantage courses of chemistry and botany at the Jardin du Roi. After having dissipated a part of his fortune, he retired to Puiseaux, where he established a distillery, the products of which he came regularly once a year to dispose of.

There was an originality in everything that he did. His custom was to sleep during the day, and to rise in the evening; he worked all night, "because," as he himself said, "he was not then disturbed by anybody." His wife, when she arose in the morning, used to find everything perfectly arranged.

To Diderot, who visited him at Puiseaux, he put some very singular questions as to the transparency of glass, and as to colors, and other facts and conditions which could be recognized only through sight. He asked if naturalists were the only persons who saw with the microscope, and if astronomers were the only persons who saw with the telescope; if the machine that magnified objects was greater than that which diminished them; if that which brought them near were shorter than that which removed them to a distance. He believed that astronomers had eyes of different conformation from those of other men, and that a man could not devote himself to the study of a particular science without having eyes specially adapted for that purpose.

"The eye," said he, "is an organ upon which the air ought to produce the same effect as my cane does upon my hand." He possessed the memory of sounds to a surprising degree, and recognized by the voice those whom he had only heard speak once.

He could tell if he was in a thoroughfare or in a cul-de-sac, in a large or in a small place. He estimated the proximity of fire by the degree of heat; the comparative fulness of vessels by the sound of the liquor in falling; and the neighborhood of bodies by the action of the air on his face. He employed characters in relief, in order to teach his son to read, and the latter never had any other master than his father.

M. Huber, of Geneva, an excellent naturalist, and author of a treatise on bees and ants, was blind from infancy. In executing his great work he had no other assistance than what he derived from his domestic, who mentioned to him the color of the insects, and then he ascertained their size and form by touch, with the same facility he would have recognized them by their humming in the air. This laborious writer also published a valuable work on education.

Beggar Becomes a Student.

Francis Lesueur, born of very poor parents at Lyons, in 1766, lost his sight when six weeks old. He went to Paris in 1778, and was begging at the gate of a church when M. Hauy, discovering in the young mendicant some inclination to study, received him, and undertook the task of instructing him, at the same time promising him a sum equal to that which he had collected in alms.

Lesueur began to study in October, 1784. Six months later he was able to read, to compose with characters in relief, to print, and in less than two years he had learned the French language, geography, and music, which he understood very well. It is painful to add that he proved ungrateful to his benefactor to whom he owed everything.

Avisse, born in Paris, embarked when very young on board a vessel fitted out for the slave trade, in the capacity of secretary or clerk to the captain; but on the coast of Africa he lost his sight from a violent inflammation. On his return his parents procured his admission into the institution for the blind, where, in a few years, he became professor of grammar and logic.

He produced a comedy in verse, in one act, entitled "La Ruse d'Aveugle," which was performed; and several other pieces, which were all printed in one volume, in 1803. He died before he had completed his thirty-first year, at the very time when the high hopes entertained of him were being realized.

Some Distinguished Churchmen.

Although blind from birth Robert Wauchope became not only a priest but the Archbishop of Armagh. It was he who, in 1541, introduced Jesuits into Ireland. In 1543 he was appointed Archbishop by Paul III; he attended the Council of Trent in 1547.

Richard Lucas, D.D., called the blind prebendary of Westminster, was another prominent blind churchman. He was the author of several well-known books on religious subjects. He lived from 1648 to 1715.

A more recent case was that of the Rev. William Henry Milburn, who died in 1903 after many years' service as chaplain of the United States Senate.

John Ziska, the famous Hussite general, was born near Budweis, Bohemia, in 1360. From childhood he was blind in one eye, and later he lost the other in battle, but that did not interfere with his aggressive and determined spirit, for after gaining several victories over the Emperor Sigismund, that monarch early in 1424 proposed a meeting at which Ziska was granted full religious liberty for his followers, and was appointed governor of Bohemia and its dependencies. Unfortunately, the old warrior did not live long enough to enjoy his well-earned peace, for he died of the plague October 11, 1424.

Sightless Poets.

There were several blind poets, of whom Milton is, of course, the most famous; he became totally blind in May, 1652, being then forty-one years of age. A large number of his works, "Paradise Lost" among others, were written after his misfortune. He lived in darkness for twenty-two years, dying November 8, 1674.

Homer was known as "the blind bard of Chio's rocky isle," but he did not become blind until late in life—if indeed he was a real person at all.

Another blind poet of note was Luigi Grotto, an Italian, known as "Il Cieco d'Adria." He lived from 1541 to 1585.

Giovanni Gonelli (1610-1664) was a noted Tuscan sculptor, and much of his work may be seen to-day. Though totally blind, he made admirable likenesses, and his portrait bust of Pope Urban VIII is very celebrated.

In more modern times we have the late Henry Fawcett, of Salisbury, England. Born in 1833, he was graduated from Cambridge in 1856. In 1858 he became totally blind, through an accident while hunting. This terrible misfortune at the outset of a promising career would have been enough to daunt most men, but in spite of it Fawcett soon became an authority on economic and political subjects, and in 1863 he was made a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. He was elected to the British House of Commons, and in 1880 he entered the cabinet as postmaster-general of England, in which position he proved himself an active and efficient minister. He died in 1884.

Another notable modern example is the great yacht designer, John B. Herreshoff. Although he became blind at fifteen, he has built up and managed the successful business that bears his name—the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, builders of several defenders of the America Cup. In spite of his blindness, he is perfectly at home in his shops or on board ship.