CHAPTER VI.
“And can it be those heavenly eyes
Blue as the blue of starry skies,
Those eyes so clear, so soft so bright,
Have never seen God’s blessed light?”
Helen returned to her father’s, to prepare for her departure to the school, which Mittie was about to leave. Arthur had long resolved to place Alice in an Institution for the blind, and as there was a celebrated one in the same city to which Helen was bound, he requested Mr. Gleason to be her guardian on the journey, and suffer her to be the companion of Helen. This arrangement filled the two young girls with rapture, and reconciled them to the prospect of leaving home, and of being cast among strangers in a strange city.
Ever since Alice was old enough to feel the misfortune that rested so darkly upon her, and had heard of those glorious institutions, where the children of night feel the beams of science and benevolence penetrate the closed bars of vision, and receive their illumination in the inner temple of the spirit, she had expressed an earnest wish to be sent where she could enjoy such advantages.
“Oh!” she would repeat a thousand times, unconscious of the pain she inflicted on her mother; “oh! if I could only go where the blind are taught every thing, how happy should I be!”
It is seldom that the widow of a country minister is left with more than the means of subsistence. Mrs. Hazleton was no exception to the general rule. But Arthur treasured up every word his blind sister uttered, and resolved to appropriate to this sacred purpose the first fruits of his profession. It was for this he had anticipated the years of manhood, and commenced the practice of medicine, under the auspices of his father’s venerable friend, Doctor Sennar, at an age when most young men are preparing themselves for their public career. Success far transcending his most sanguine hopes having crowned his youthful exertions, he was now enabled to purchase the Parsonage, and present it as a filial offering to his mother, and also to defray the expenses of his sister’s education.
Alice had never before visited the home of Helen, and it was an interesting sight to see with what watchful care and protecting tenderness Helen guided and guarded her steps. Louis, who was at home also passing his summer holidays, beheld for the first time the lovely blind girl of whom Helen had so often spoken and written.
He was now a man in appearance, of noble stature, and most prepossessing countenance. Helen was enthusiastically fond of her brother, and had said to Alice, with unconscious repetition—