The Book of Courage

by John T. Faris

In 1779 Richmond, Virginia, gave birth to James Wilson, who lost his sight when he was four years old, because of smallpox. He was then on shipboard, and was taken to Belfast, Ireland, where he grew to manhood. When a boy he delivered newspapers to subscribers who lived as far as five miles from the city. When fifteen he used part of his earnings to buy books which he persuaded other boys to read to him. At twenty-one he entered an institution for the blind, for fuller instruction. Then he joined with a circle of mechanics in forming a reading society. One friend promised to read to him every evening such books as he could procure. The hours for reading were from nine to one every night in summer and from seven to eleven every night in the winter. "Often I have traveled three or four miles, in a severe winter night, to be at my post in time," he said once. "Perished with cold and drenched with rain, I have many a time sat down and listened for several hours together to the writings of Plutarch, Rollins, or Clarendon." After seven or eight years of this training, he was "acquainted with almost every work in the English language" his biographer says, perhaps a little extravagantly. His education he used in literary work.

B. B. Bowen was a Massachusetts boy just a century ago. When a babe he lost his sight. In 1833 Dr. Howe—husband of Julia Ward Howe—selected him as one of six blind boys on whom he was to make the first experiments in the instruction of the blind. Later he wrote a book of which eighteen thousand copies were sold.

Another of the men who proved the loss of sight was not a bar to successful work was Thomas R. Lounsbury, the Yale scholar whose studies in Chaucer and Shakespeare made him famous. Toward the close of his busy life he was engaged in a critical study of Tennyson, preparatory to writing an exhaustive book on the life of the great poet. He did not live to complete the work, but he left it in such shape that a friend was able to put it in the hands of the publishers.

In the Introduction to the biography this friend told of the courageous manner in which Professor Lounsbury faced threatening blindness and continued his writing in spite of the danger. We are told that his eyes, never very good, failed him for close and prolonged work. "At best he could depend upon them for no more than two or three hours a day. Sometimes he could not depend upon them at all. That he might not subject them to undue strain, he acquired the habit of writing in the dark. Night after night, using a pencil on coarse paper, he would sketch a series of paragraphs for consideration in the morning. This was almost invariably his custom in later years. Needless to say, these rough drafts are difficult reading for an outsider. Though the lines could be kept reasonably straight, it was impossible for a man enveloped in darkness to dot an i or to cross a t. Moreover, many words were abbreviated, and numerous sentences were left half written out. Every detail, however, was perfectly plain to the author himself. With these detached slips of paper and voluminous notes before him, he composed on a typewriter his various chapters, putting the paragraphs in logical sequence."

Francis Parkman, the historian who made the Indian wars real to fascinated readers, was a physical wreck on the completion of "The Oregon Trail," when he was but twenty-five years old. He could not write even his own name, except with his eyes closed; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. But he would not give up. During the weary days of darkness he thought out the story of the conspiracy of Pontiac and decided to write it. Physicians warned him that the results would be disastrous, yet he felt that nothing could do him more harm than an idle, purposeless life.

One of his chief difficulties he solved in an ingenious manner. In a manuscript, published after his death, his plan was described:

"He caused a wooden frame to be constructed of the size and shape of a sheet of letter paper. Stout wires were fixed horizontally across it, half an inch apart, movable back of thick pasteboard fitted behind them. The paper for writing was placed between the pasteboard and wires, guided by which and using a black-lead crayon, he could write not illegibly with closed eyes."

This contrivance, with improvements, he used for about forty years of semi-blindness.

The documents on which he depended for his facts were read to him, though sometimes for days he could not listen, and then perhaps only for half an hour at a time. As he listened to the reading he made notes with closed eyes. Then he turned over in his mind what he had heard and laboriously wrote a few lines. For months he penned an average of only three or four lines a day. Later he was able to work more rapidly and he completed the book in two years and a half. No publisher was found who was willing to bear the expense of issuing the volume, and the young man paid for the plates himself.

Friends thought that now he would have to give up. His eyes were still troubling him, he became lame, his head felt as if great bands of iron were fastened about it, and frequently he did not sleep more than an hour or two a night. Then came the death of his wife, on whom he had depended for some years. At one time his physician warned him that he had not more than six months to live. But when a friend said that he had nothing more to live for, he made the man understand that he was not ready to hoist the white flag.