Now, Mr. Idler, I have no opportunity for spilling hot soup down the necks of my clients and my conscience will not permit me to attract their notice by gross neglect of duty. My effective work has failed to bring upon me their favorable regard. Finding myself so situated, and being, even yet, hopeful of some opportunity for bettering myself, I have written you this letter. I have done so in the hope that it may meet the eye of some one of my clients, perhaps that of the literary gentleman through whose barrel I first made your acquaintance and the acquaintance of the ingenious Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.
I, am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
Charles Clinker.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND
To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: Those who are blessed, as the saying is, with two eyes and the gift of sight, are much given to expressing sympathy with, and sorrow for, the blind. It would be churlish to quarrel with so unselfish a sentiment, for it is, indeed, very good-natured of those who are busily engaged in seeing the sights of the world to spare the time and the thought which they give to the sightless. Yet I often wonder if the blind do not sometimes question, as I do, if a great deal of this sympathy is not wasted?
I, Sir, am blind. Totally and irretrievably blind. I have been blind all my life, having been, as the Irish say, “dark” from my birth. Born blind, in fact. My “affliction,” as it is called, being natural, I was born with no blemish to betray my infirmity, and it has so happened upon several occasions that, being thrown into the company of those who had not previously been warned of my condition, I have been compelled to make them acquainted with it myself. This information has invariably been the signal for apology and sympathetic pity. From which I infer that men generally feel that the blind are to be pitied and consoled. Also I have read a great deal of the hardship of being blind, though I have never, I confess, been quite able to see wherein that hardship lay. You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me say that I have “read” of this, but I assure you there is no reason to be surprised. If you are at all acquainted with the progress of science, as I suppose you are, you must have heard of raised type. Oh, yes, I read quite as naturally as you, yourself, though I accomplish with my fingers what you do with your eyes.
The result of my reading has been that I have come seriously to question the theory that sight is necessary to human happiness and efficiency. It has been borne in upon me that men possessed of two good eyes are often apparently unable to make use of them. I read that men often fall in love with women who seem, to all others, extremely ugly; and that women as often do the same by men. And not only that, but that they are quite frequently completely deceived in the characters of the persons whom they marry, women discovering their husbands to be bullies, and men finding their wives to be viragoes and shrews; and all this when the nuptial knot is tied hard and fast and the damage is beyond repair.
If eyes are really of as much use as those who see seem to think them, how is it possible that people should make such mistakes? Blind as I am, such a thing could never happen to me, nor do I think it could befall any sightless person; certainly not one who has been, as I have, blind from birth. I know the voice of a shrew the moment she opens her mouth, no matter how pleasantly she may speak at the moment. I can point out to you the drunkard, the hypocrite and the boor the moment I have heard them speak. In the tone of his voice every man carries his true certificate of character, be it good or bad. An ill-tempered man may conceal his vice from you, who look only at his face and judge his speech by his words, but he can not deceive me, for I know him by his voice. I have been engaged in business for the last thirty years and I have never once been taken in by a swindler. I have never yet been mistaken in the character of a man with whom I dealt. How many seeing men can say as much?
Excepting the human being, we know of no such active or intelligent creature as the ant—the ant who lives in total darkness. Yet does he not build his cities and fight his battles as wisely as we do our own? I sometimes wonder if the possession of the power of sight is not a hindrance, rather than a help, in labor? The ant, who can not see at all, goes straight to his object. He is never distracted by the sight of things along the way. The fly, on the contrary, is possessed of a great many eyes; his head, in fact, is practically all eyes. Yet what is the fly but a parasite, a nuisance, a very vagabond of insects? Attracted hither and thither by everything that meets his gaze, he lights first upon one object and then upon another, without rhyme or reason save his overweening curiosity, until he finally falls into a trap and dies an ignoble death in a spider’s web, or caught fast upon a sticky paper. The fly has no social organization, no family life, no mating in any proper sense of the word. He pollutes all that he touches. His entire life is a life of destruction, as opposed to the ant’s, which is a life of construction.