various occupations of manual labor, preparing for careers of selfsupport and usefulness.

This swung wide open the door of hope, and immediately awakened his ambitions for a life, not of helpless existence, but of achievement. His friends advised him, however, to enter Perkins Institution in Boston, as he was a New Englander; and this was made possible in May, 1863, by Dr. S. G. Howe, through the introduction of a fellow townsman of Mr. Smith's, Philo Bevin.

His first task was to learn the business of broom-making, and this he mastered quickly and thoroughly; for at the beginning he had no other idea than to do this work and do it well. But gradually his possibilities and his career unfolded. He learned the seating of cane-chairs, and then the art of tuning pianos, which he was soon called upon to teach at the Institution. When the superintendent of the boys' work left Perkins, Francis Campbell (later Sir Francis, so knighted in 1909 by King Edward) added the care of the boys' department to his musical work, making Mr. Smith his assistant and an officer in Perkins Institution in 1866.

When Mr. Campbell went to England in 1869, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the president of Perkins Institution, placed the care of the boys' department in the hands of Mr. Smith, making him practically assistant superintendent of the institution. Three years later, in 1872, Mr. Smith joined Mr. Campbell in London to assist in the administration of the Royal Normal College and Academy of Music for the Blind. There, in addition to his other work, he established a department in tuning organs and pianos. Before he left Perkins he had had charge of the teaching of tuning, and was thus well prepared for this responsibility.

The Royal Normal College was in a sense a pioneer in England in educating the blind, and met a great need among the blind there. The aim of the English blind had been to learn to read well, so as to take their station upon the street-corners and read to passers-by. Many of the blind were effective Bible readers. But only 2 per cent of the English blind were able to earn their own living. This new institution was analagous to the American public school, and took a place far ahead of all other English schools for the blind. It proved at once a revelation to English philanthropy. Dr. T. R. Armitage gave the first money for its establishment, and other large-hearted philanthropists soon swelled its funds. Starting

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with only two pupils, its halls were soon filled with eager blind pupils.

The following November, 1872, having heard of the excellent tuning methods of the French schools, Mr. Smith went to France to observe French tuning and piano repairing at the French "Institution des Jeunes Aveugles". There for the first time he heard a whole orchestra of blind musicians, rendering elaborate symphonic music. The next summer he traveled over Belgium, the Rhine, Southern Germany and Switzerland, visiting various institutions for the blind, and closely observing their methods. While in Switzerland he made an attempt to ascend Mount Blanc, but finally gave it up because his French guides could not speak English, and his hazards, already great, were thus doubled. Mr. Campbell three years later found English guides and won the distinction of being the first blind man to ascend Mount Blanc.

Out of this European sojourn he gained a thorough acquaintance with the advantages and disadvantages of the Braille system of writing. Its inventor had not been wise enough to use the easiest forms for the letters recurring most frequently. Upon his return to this country Mr. Smith, after an extended series of experiments, resolved to modify and recast the whole system, so as to construct an alphabet upon a scientific basis, that would be the easiest for blind men to read and write. How completely he succeeded in this is evident by the constantly growing favor which his alphabet is meeting. Practically every important school for the blind, founded in this country since 1892, has adopted his system to the exclusion of all others.

In 1875 he returned once more to Perkins Institution in Boston, where he remained for twenty years more, until 1895. Besides his pedagogical work and the development of his great alphabet, Mr. Smith's lesser claims to distinction lie in his inventions, facilitating the writing of the blind, and in his magazine for the blind, both of which he developed at Perkins.

"The Daisy", his first invention of importance, was a unique machine for typewriting Braille letters. It took its name from the form of the six keys, which are arranged about a center like the petals of a daisy. According to the letters of Braille desired, one or more keys are pressed at the same time, thus by direct power from the fingers piercing the paper for the points desired. The

machine was ante-dated only by one made by Bond for Laura Bridgman, with which to outline Roman letters for her touch.

A pocket tablet he also produced, which was an effective modification upon the French designs of a writing frame, whereby the blind could carry their writing machines with them. The bars on Mr. Smith's tablet marked off double lines to guide the hand, so that the blind writer could write eight lines without shifting the paper.

"The Unigraph", another machine of Mr. Smith's invention for writing Braille, employs a movable one-letter cell, which advances along a ratchet bar, instead of using a continuous line of cells, thus avoiding the necessity of removing the stylus from the cell.

In January, 1891, a periodical called The Mentor was founded, which was the first magazine for the blind, ink-printed in America. There had been a magazine printed for the blind in Germany before this, not widely circulated, however, in this country. The influence of this little monthly paper, started and fostered by the alumni of Perkins Institution, largely through Mr. Smith, and later published and managed by him, is difficult to measure. It was world-wide in its reach. The account in The Mentor of the stereotype machine for blind literature led to the adoption of the machine in Japan, thus making possible the popularizing of the printed page among the blind of that empire.

One issue contained an account of the education of Ragnhild Kaata, a Norwegian girl (born in 1873), who was blind, deaf and consequently dumb. Her teacher, Elias H. Hofgaard, principal of the School for the Deaf at Hamar, using the oral method from the start, began to teach her to pronounce the consonants f, p, t, k, s, and the vowels o, o, u and a. The letter s was the hardest to learn. The first word he taught her was "sofa". After eight days of patient struggle, it dawned upon her at last that there was a relation between the pronounced words and the objects touched. Thus her remarkable teacher taught her to speak fluently. To Helen Keller, then in Perkins Institution, each issue of The Mentor was read with regularity; and after the article upon Ragnhild Kaata she exclaimed in her sign-language of touch, "Why then, can I not learn to speak aloud also?" This was Helen Keller's first incentive to accomplish the art of speaking, and her teacher,

Miss Sullivan, once said that if The Mentor had done nothing else but stir this ambition in Helen Keller's heart, which has resulted so wonderfully, it would by that alone have justified its existence.

In this work Mr. Smith was assisted by Miss Martha W. Sawyer, a woman of great ability, who had been connected with Mr. Campbell in his work in London, with the Associated Charities of Boston, with Professor Asa Gray, Dr. S. G. Howe, and other distinguished workers. At one time when her right hand failed her through nerve-strain, she learned to write with her left hand. In 1887 she returned to Perkins, where she had been before from 1867 to 1873, and later became editor of The Mentor until her death in 1894. The May number of that year is largely devoted to her biography and memorials.

During these twenty years at Perkins one of Mr. Smith's practical services to the blind was the popularizing of piano-tuning by the blind. With great difficulty he at last secured a contract for having all the pianos in the city schools of Boston tuned by blind tuners, and so very satisfactory has this work proved to be that it is still being done by the pupils of the institution, while many other cities have followed the example of Boston. This marked an epoch in that branch of the trades for the blind, and when it was announced by Mr. Smith, to the convention of the American Association of Workers for the Blind, it was received with the greatest applause. This achievement did much to counteract the widespread but unfounded prejudice against blind tuners, in this country.

When Mr. Smith entered Perkins Institution in 1863 he attempted to learn to read by touching the embossed Roman letters of the old line type, then used in the literature of the blind. process, he found, made his arm ache fearfully, as it affected the nerves as far as his shoulders. By a strange argument the directors of most of the English-speaking schools for the blind insisted upon having the difficult and altogether unsatisfactory Roman letters taught to the blind. They thought that the blind should not be taught an alphabet different from that printed for sighted persons, an alphabet that their teachers could not read (without special preparation), an alphabet that they feared might increase the already pitiable isolation of the blind. Indeed, when Mr. Smith complained to Dr. Howe, the superintendent of Perkins

Institution, about the difficulty of the Roman letters, and urged the substitution of Braille, Dr. Howe replied, "I would as soon. print in Choctaw as in Braille: for if we printed in Braille we would have to teach it to our teachers." And this attitude on the part of many institutions seriously retarded the education of the blind for many years, until at last the Roman letters were largely superseded by a better principle,-the embossed points of Braille punctography.

The successive steps from the beginning of embossed printing for the blind to the perfecting of punctography form an interesting chapter in the history of writing. The first great name in this story belongs to a Frenchman, Valentin Hauy (1745-1822), who was almost the first to teach the blind to read letters that are legible through touch. For this purpose he employed a French italic, teaching the blind to read with considerable success, and winning favorable recognition from the Academy of Sciences and the Philosophical Society of Paris. He was disappointed, however, in that the interest shown by King Louis XVI of France and Emperor Paul of Russia in his experiments did not produce the financial aid that he had expected.

But Hauy was an innovator, not a perfector, and a few years later several educators attempted to improve his system of embossed type. One of these was James Call, who published a type of Roman letters with angles instead of curves, more easily recognized by the touch on that account. In some places this was soon superseded by the series of Roman capitals adopted by Dr. Fry and Mr. Allston, a printer. Still other modifications of the Roman letter were adopted in Boston and Philadelphia. With these should be mentioned also the Lucas and Frerephonetic types for stenography by the blind, and the Moon alphabet, that is more easily read by older or less sensitive hands. But all of these systems have almost disappeared before the advance of the Braille principle, except the Moon type, which is still used, especially among older persons.

The first educator to apply embossed points for the blind reader was the Frenchman, M. Barbier. He constructed characters of twelve or less points, making his characters six points high upon a base of two points. This, of course, was unwieldy, and not easily grasped by the touch of the hand in quickly passing from left to

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