John Greenleaf Whittier.
[1880.]
This Document is on The Quaker Writings Home Page.
To Mary C. Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.
DEAR FRIEND,-- It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy class at the Institution
for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them to read through the sense of touch some of my
writrags, and thus hold what I hope will prove a pleasant com munion with me. Very glad I shall
be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I have tried to make, are
understood and appreciated by those who cannot discern them by natural vision. I shall count it a
great privilege to see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind after all
that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions of beauty and sublimity passed before
the inward and spiritual sight of blind Milton and Beethoven!
I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and blind; yet under these
circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high degree, and has written poems of great beauty,
and vivid descriptions of scenes which have been witnessed on ly by the "light Within."
I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear-that they can well dispense with the outward and material ones.