Pippin curled his long legs up on the floor, his back against the door jamb. "This is great!" he murmured. "This certainly is great. I'd ought to be gettin' on, but I don't care. Now if you're ready, Mr. Brand!"
Brand reached for a pile of straws, measured, clipped, laid them in orderly piles ready for binding in.
"I was born in Cyrus," he said; "born and raised. I was the only child, and my parents did everything they could for me. I was a happy youngster and had reason to be. Everybody was good to me; Cyrus is a good, kind neighborly place. Yes, sir, I was a happy boy. Always singing and laughing; I recollect hearing folks say, 'Poor child!' or like that when they came to see mother. I used to wonder what poor child they meant. I asked Lucy one day—Lucy Allen, that's Mrs. Bailey now; we lived next door, and played together always, her and Jacob and me. I says, 'Lucy, who are they always saying "Poor child!" about? Is it you?' And Lucy says, 'I wouldn't wonder, Dave! My front teeth has come out, and I am a sight.' Little girl seven years old: she was that thoughtful always, Lucy was. She was doing me good turns every day and all day when we was little: once, I remember, I had a chance to do her one. We was playing together in Uncle Ivory Cheeseman's candy kitchen—he give us the run of it, Lucy and Jacob and me, because he could trust us, he said; he was a kind old man, though crusty where crust was needed. Well, we was playing there, and Lucy went too near the stove and her dress caught fire. I smelled it before it begun to blaze, and caught it in my two hands and squeezed it out. 'Twas a calico skirt; another minute and 'twould have been in a blaze."
Brand paused, and Pippin looked up inquiringly.
"I've always been thankful for that!" said Brand. "There was a girl at the Institution who lost her sight by burning, just that way, her skirt catching at the stove."
"Now wouldn't that give you a pain?" murmured Pippin. "I know what burnin' feels like, just a mite of it. Not meanin' to interrupt, Mr. Brand; I'm just as interested!"
"When I was ten years old, mother died, and father sent me to the Blind Institution. I was there many years, and there I learned all I know—except what I learned before or since!" Brand added with a whimsical smile. "That puts me in mind of the first—no, the second—day I was there. I was to see the Doctor, the head of the Institution—he was away the day I came—and I was left alone in his office to wait for him. I was always keen to see what kind of place I was in, so I was moving about the room, finding out in my own way, when the door opened and two men came in. One of them was tall—what say?"
"Now! now!" cried Pippin. "How in the airthly did you know he was tall?"
"His voice was high up! That's an easy one, Pippin. Why, you would know that, with those good ears. He was speaking, and the first sound of that voice stays by me yet. A master voice! I've never forgot the words either. 'The first lesson—the hard lesson—you have first to learn is—to be blind—to live in the world without light—to look upon your life as still a blessing and a trust, and to resolve to spend it well and cheerfully, in the service of your Maker and for the happiness of those about you.'"[1]
[1] Dr. S.G. Howe to one of his blind pupils.