Part 104

Many blind men can, I am told, distinguish between the several kinds of wood by touch alone. Mahogany, oak, ash, elm, deal, they say, have all a different feel. They declare it is quite ridiculous, the common report, that blind people can discern colours by the touch. One of my informants, who assured me that he was considered to be one of the cleverest of blind people, told me that he had made several experiments on this subject, and never could distinguish the least difference between black or red, or white, or yellow, or blue, or, indeed, any of the mixed colours. “My wife,” said one, “went blind so young, that she doesn’t never remember having seen the light; and I am often sorry for her that she has no idea of what a beautiful thing light or colours is. We often talk about it together, and then she goes a little bit melancholy, because I can’t make her understand what the daylight is like, or the great delight that there is in seeing it. I’ve often asked whether she knows that the daylight and the candlelight is of different colours, and she has told me she thinks they are the same; but then she has no notion of colours at all. Now, it’s such people as these I pities.” I told the blind man of Sanderson’s wonderful effect of imagination in conceiving that the art of seeing was similar to that of a series of threads being drawn from the distant object to the eye; and he was delighted with the explanation, saying, “he could hardly tell how a born blind man could come at such an idea.” On talking with this man, he told me he remembered having seen a looking-glass once--his mother was standing putting her cap on before it, and he thought he never saw anything so pretty as the reflection of the half-mourning gown she had on, and the white feathery pattern upon it (he was five years old then). He also remembered having seen his shadow, and following it across the street; these were the only two objects he can call to mind. He told me that he knew many blind men who could not comprehend how things could be seen, round or square, _all at once_; they are obliged, they say, to pass their fingers all over them; and how it is that the shape of a thing can be known in an instant, they cannot possibly imagine. I found out that this blind man fancied the looking-glass reflected only one object at once--only the object that was immediately in front of it; and when I told him that, looking in the glass, I could see everything in the room, and even himself, with my back turned towards him, he smiled with agreeable astonishment. He said, “You see how little I have thought about the matter.” There was a blind woman of his acquaintance, he informed me, who could thread the smallest needle with the finest hair in a minute, and never miss once. “She’ll do it in a second. Many blind women thread their needles with their tongues; the woman who stitches by the Polytechnic always does so.” My informant was very fond of music. One of the blind makes his own teeth, he told me; his front ones have all been replaced by one long bit of bone which he has fastened to the stumps of his two eye teeth: he makes them out of any old bit of bone he can pick up. He files them and drills a hole through them to fasten them into his head, and eats his food with them. He is obliged to have teeth because he plays the clarionet in the street. “Music,” he said, “is our only enjoyment, we all like to listen to it and learn it.” It affects them greatly, they tell me, and if a lively tune is played, they can hardly help dancing. “Many a tune I’ve danced to so that I could hardly walk the next day,” said one. Almost all of the blind men are clever at reckoning. It seems to come natural to them after the loss of their sight. By counting they say they spend many a dull hour--it appears to be all mental arithmetic with them, for they never aid their calculations by their fingers or any signs whatever. My informant knew a blind man who could reckon on what day it was new moon for a hundred years back, or when it will be new moon a century to come--he had never had a book read to him on the subject in his life--he was one of the blind wandering musicians. My informant told me he often sits for hours and calculates how many quarters of ounces there are in a ship-load of tea, and such like things. Many of the blind are very

## partial to the smell of flowers. My informant knew one blind man about

the streets who always would have some kind of smelling flowers in his room.

“The blind are very ingenious; oh, very!” said one to me, “they can do anything that they can feel. One blind man who kept a lodging-house at Manchester and had a wife fond of drink, made a little chest of drawers (about two feet high), in which he used to put his money, and so cleverly did he arrange it that neither his wife nor any one else could get at the money without breaking the drawers all to pieces. Once while her blind husband was on his travels, she opened every drawer by means of false keys, and though she took each one out, she could find no means to get at the money, which she could hear jingling inside when she shook it. At last she got so excited over it that she sent for a carpenter, and even he was obliged to confess that he could not get to it without taking the drawers to pieces. The same blind man had a great fancy for white mice, and made a little house for them out of pieces of wood cut into the shape of bricks: there were doors, windows, and all,” said my informant. The blind are remarkable for the quickness of their hearing--one man assured me he could hear the lamp-posts in the streets, and, indeed, any _substance_ (any solid thing he said) that he passed in the street, provided it be as high as his ear; if it were below that he could not _hear_ it so well.

“Do you know, I can hear any substance in the street as I pass it by, even the lamp-post or a dead wall--anything that’s the height of my head, let it be ever so small, just as well, and tell what it is as well as you as can see. One night I was coming home--you’ll be surprised to hear this--along Burlington-gardens, between twelve and one o’clock, and a gentleman was following me. I knew he was not a poor man by his walk, but I didn’t consider he was watching me. I just heerd when I got between Sackville-street and Burlington-street. Oh, I knows every inch of the street, and I can go as quick as you can, and walk four mile an hour; know where I am all the while. I can tell the difference of the streets by the sound of my ear--a wide street and a narrow street--I can’t tell a long street till I get to the bottom of it. I can tell when I come to an opening or a turning just by the click on the ear, without either my touching with hand or stick. Well, as I was saying, this gentleman was noticing me, and just as I come to turn up Cork-street, which, you know, is my road to go into Bond-street, on my way home; just as I come into Cork-street, and was going to turn round the corner, the sergeant of police was coming from Bond-street, at the opposite corner of Cork-street, I heerd him, and he just stopped to notice me, but didn’t know the gentleman was noticing me too. I whipped round the corner as quick as any man that had his sight, and said, ‘Good night, policeman.’ I can tell a policeman’s foot anywhere, when he comes straight along in his regular way while on his beat, and they all know it too. I can’t tell it where there’s a noise, but in the stillness of the night nothing would beat me. I can’t hear the lamp-posts when there’s a noise. When I said, ‘Good night, policeman,’ the gentleman whipped across to him, and says, ‘Is that man really blind?’ and by this time I was half way up Cork-street, when the gentleman hallooed to me to stop; and he comes up, and says, says he, ‘Are you really blind?’ The sergeant of police was with him, and he says, ‘Yes, he is really blind, sir;’ and then he says, ‘How is it that you go so cleverly along the street if you’re blind?’ Well, I didn’t want to stop bothering with him, so I merely says, ‘I do far cleverer things than that. I can hear the lamp-post as well as you that can see it.’ He says, ‘Yes, because you know the distance from one to another.’ The sergeant stood there all the time, and he says, ‘No, that can’t be, for they’re not a regular distance one from another.’ Then the gentleman says, ‘Now, could you tell if I was standing in the street when you passed me by?’ I said, ‘Yes; but you mustn’t stand behind the lamp-post to deceive me with the sound of the substance.’ Then he went away to try me, and a fine try we had. He will laugh when he sees that they’re all put down. When he went away I recollected that if he didn’t stand as near to the pavement as the lamp-post is, and remain still, he’d deceive me. Oh, certainly, I couldn’t hear him if he was far off, and I shouldn’t hear him in the same way as I can hear the lamp-posts if he didn’t stand still. The policeman hallooed after him, and told him that he mustn’t deceive me; but he wouldn’t make no answer, for fear I should catch the sound of his voice and know where he was. I had agreed to touch every substance as I went along and round the street to look for him; we always call it looking though we are blind. Well, when he had stood still the sergeant told me to go; he’s the sergeant of St. James’ station-house, and has been often speaking to me since about it; and on I went at the rate of about three mile an hour, and touched every lamp-post without feeling for them, but just struck them with my stick as I went by, without stopping, and cried out, ‘There’s a substance.’ At last I come to him. There’s a mews, you know, just by the hotel in Cork-street, and the gentleman stood between the mews and Clifford-street, in Cork-street; and when I come up to him, I stopped quite suddenly, and cried out ‘There’s a substance.’ As I was offering to touch him with my stick, he drew back very softly, just to deceive me. Then he would have another try, but I picked him out again, but that wouldn’t satisfy him, and he would try me a third time; and then, when I come up to him, he kept drawing back, right into the middle of the road. I could hear the stones scrunch under his feet; so I says, ‘Oh, that’s not fair;’ and he says, ‘Well, I’m bet.’ Then he made me a present, and said that he would like to spend an hour some night with me again. I don’t think he was a doctor, ’cause he never took no notice of my eyes, but he was a real gentleman--the sergeant said so.

“When I dream, it’s just the same as I am now, I dream of hearing and touching. The last dream that I had was about a blind man--that’s in prison just now. I went into his wife’s house, I knew it was her house by the sound of my foot in it. I can tell whether a place is clean or dirty by the sound. Then I heard her say, ‘Well, how do you get on?’ and I said ‘Very well;’ and she said ‘Sit down,’ and after sitting there a little while, I heard a voice at the door, and I said to her, ‘Bless me, wouldn’t you think that was John;’ she said, ‘Yes, I would,’ but she took no farther notice, and I heard his voice repeatedly. I thought he was speaking to a child, and I got up and went to the door, and says, ‘Halloa! is this you;’ I was quite surprised and took him by the arm (laying his hand on his own) and he was in his shirt sleeves. I knew that by the feel. Then I was kind of afeard of him, though I am not afeard of anything. I was rather surprised that he should come out three weeks before his time. Then I dreamt that he tried to frighten and pushed me down on the floor, that way (making the motion sideways), to make me believe he was a ghost. I felt it as plain as I should if you were to do the same to me now. I says to him ‘Don’t be so foolish, sit down’, and I pushed him away and got up. When I got up, his wife says to him, ‘Sit down, John, and don’t be so foolish; sit down, and behave yourself;’ and then we set down the two of us, just on the edge of the bed (here he moved his hand along the edge of the table). I thought it was turned down. He’s a very resolute man and a wicked one, this blind man is, so I would like to have been out from him, but I was afeard to go, for he’d got a hold of me; after that I waked and I heerd no more. But it’s my real opinion that he’s dead now, it is indeed, through having such dreams of him I think so; and the same night his wife dreamt that I was killed and all knocked into about a hundred pieces; and those two dreams convince me something’s come to him. Oh, I do firmly believe in dreams, that I do; they’re sent for people to foresee things, I’m certain of it, if people will only take notice of ’em. I have been many times in prison myself, while I’ve been travelling the country. You know in many towns they comes and takes you up without given you never no warning if they catches you begging. I was took up once in Liverpool, once in Hull, once in Exeter, and once in Biddeford, in Devonshire. Most of the times I had a month, and one of them only seven days. I think that’s very unjust--never to say you mustn’t do it; but to drag you off without never no warning. Every time before I was put in quod I had always dreamt that my father was starving to death for want of victuals, and at last I got to know whenever I dreamt that, I was sure of going to prison. I never dreamt about my mother; she died, you see, when I was very young, and I never remember hearing her speak but once or twice. My father never did the thing that was right to me, and I didn’t care much about him. When I was at home I was very fond of pigeons, and my mind went so much upon them, that I used to dream of it the night before, always when they had eggs, and when my rabbits had young ones too. I know when I wake in the morning that I am awake by my thoughts. Sometimes I dream I’ve got a lot of money in my hand, and when I wake and put my hand to feel it, it’s gone, there’s none there, and so I know it’s been only a dream. I’m much surprised at my disappointment though.”