New Brooms

by Robert J. Shores

According to the Grecian mythology, the largest race of men the world has ever known, the Cyclops, had but a single eye, and that in the middle of the forehead. The stupidest of all characters of the Grecian myths was Argus, who, though he had more eyes than all the gods and heroes together, yet allowed Hermes to pipe him to sleep and so cut off his head. In the tail of Hera’s peacock, his eyes were of as much use to him as in his own head. Eros, the god of love, was blind; yet he was of all the gods the most joyful. And in this, our own day, is not Justice blind?

Is there, in all this, no significance? Is there no hint of an understanding of the secret that, as he who would save his soul must first lose it, so he who would see must first be blind?

Men see, as we say, with the mind as well as with the eye. Men also see with the spirit. Saul never could see the truth and beauty of Christianity until he was stricken blind upon the road to Damascus. But while he was blind, he saw, and so became Paul. Would Homer have been the giant of poets had he had his sight? I doubt it. Would Milton have attained his heights of inspiration, had he retained his vision? I can not believe it. For the man who has physical sight looks upon the earth and the works of men; but he who has only the spiritual sight, lifts up his eyes to God and His angels.

The shepherd lad who has never traveled beyond his native valley dreams a beautiful dream of the world that lies beyond the hills that hem him in. But the tourist lives a life of constant disillusion, for he finds in distant lands, where he had thought to find the abiding-place of Romance, the same humdrum life of the commonplace that he left at home.

We who are blind, Mr. Idler, are the shepherd boys of this life. Enclosed in our valley of darkness by the everlasting shadow of our endless night, we dream of the world that lies beyond as a place of beauty and happiness. For us there is no sad disillusion. For us there is no rude awakening from the delights of fancy. For us the sky is always fair and the earth is always sweet. For us the woods are thronged with nymphs and the grasses with the little people of fairyland. We do not know the gloom of age or the horror of decay. We do not know the sight of death.

Do not imagine, Sir, that because we can not see, we can not create images. We can, we do. We dream of the earth as fair as other men may dream of heaven. Because we have never seen beauty, to us all things are beautiful. When I walk in the garden, the scent of the rose rises to my nostrils with a sweetness which is but intensified because I can not see the blossom whence it springs. I finger its fragile petals, and I rejoice in its beauty of form, for you must know that one can feel beauty as well as see it. I lean my head against the friendly and sturdy oak and I hear the beating of his heart. For to me all these things live. What does it signify that they can not see, or hear, or speak? I can not see; am I the less a man for that? I learn that nowadays it is possible to communicate with people who are born not only blind, but deaf and dumb as well. That it is possible to teach them to read and to speak, even as I was taught to read and speak. Is it not possible, then, that some day, if we will only try, we may be able to break through the long silence that has separated us from our brothers and sisters of the woods and fields? Already, we who are blind can almost understand the whispered syllables of the rustling leaves and the waving grass. May not some other, one perhaps more closely shut in with God than we, reach downward as well as upward, and bring about the universal understanding? I hope it may be so.

My wife, who had the sweetest voice of any girl I ever knew, is as fair to me to-day as upon the day when I first fell in love. Her voice, if anything, has grown more pleasant as she has grown older. She, too, is blind, and together we enjoy a state of happiness which comes as near to being perpetual youth as it is possible for mortals to attain. How infinitely better this seems to me, than to be compelled, day after day, to watch the fading of that flower of my early love! To observe anxiously the lines of care creeping into that dearly beloved countenance; to see the snow of many winters slowly whiten her soft smooth hair! What a kindness of the good God is this, that she remains forever young to me, as I do to her, and that our passion knows nothing of the insidious poison of departing comeliness!

Curiously enough, our only child, the dearly beloved son who was the fruit of our attachment, has a perfect vision. And this, Mr. Idler, odd as it may seem to you who are accustomed to look upon this matter from a different point of view, is the one worry of my life. Many a night have I lain awake, listening to the gentle breathing of my wife at my side, and turned over and over in my mind the dangers which he must face because of his condition. Often have I prayed God that He might watch over him and turn aside his eyes from the ugliness, the sin and the temptation, which his mother and I have mercifully been spared! It is hard, in any case, to have the child grow up and go out into the world. But it is infinitely more hard to know that he is almost as though he were of another race of beings, and that he must endure the sight of pain, of misery, of squalor, of poverty and of age! That he must be subject to temptations for which I can not prepare him, having never met with them myself.

I once read a story of a man who became mysteriously possessed of the power to read the thoughts of all those with whom he came in contact. At first he was transported into the seventh heaven of delight, reveling in the sense of his new-found power. But soon he came to realize what a curse had fallen upon him. Turn where he would, he found the minds of men filled with envy, malice and evil. The fairest faces served to hide from others, but not from him, the most ignoble minds. Beneath the frankest and most friendly manner he often read the secret hatred and jealousy. Confronted upon all sides with the evidence of the wickedness and baseness of his fellows, he was at last driven to despair, and by one desperate act destroyed both his power and his life.

Mr. Idler, were I suddenly to be granted the gift of sight, I think that I should feel like that. It is hard enough to read of some things. I should not care to look upon them.