“I’m glad to meet you, Priddy! I’m blind, as you probably know.”
I expressed my amazement that he should be in college.
“Oh,” Sanderson exclaimed, “it doesn’t seem to bother him any. I notice that he’s getting on for Phi Beta Kappa. He makes us hump!”
“Then you are able to take the regular studies!” I gasped.
“Yes,” said Quarles, “the regular studies!”
“Of course,” I went on, “you omit mathematics, languages, and such things!”
“Why should I, Priddy?” asked Quarles turning toward me his expressionless eyes.
“Well, I really don’t see how you can manage—those subjects,” I explained.
“He manages all right,” interrupted Sanderson, “why, Priddy, he’s taken nineties in calculus, French and German and Greek, and is right there when it comes to such graft courses, as philosophy and English! Oh, you don’t need to pity him: rather pity me, who with my eyesight, am hardly able to pull through Fine Arts One!”
Quarles then explained to me how, before taking his courses, he had a student read to him the complete text which he translated into Braille with his blind-writing apparatus, on sheets of paper. He also used the same instrument, almost as quickly as we, with our sight, would use our pencils in the professor’s lectures. The leaves he had been shuffling that morning, formed a reading lesson in French.