LIGHTENING THE DARKNESS.
The Lord Mayor has opened a fund to assist the National Institute for the Blind in its endeavour to increase and cheapen the supply of Braille literature.
IN THE BRAVE 3D. DAYS.
In these times of change and stress I have been remembering with much relief a curious character who haunted the British Museum Reading Room a quarter of a century ago. He cannot be there still, for he was elderly then: a military-looking man with a very upright, almost corsetted, form, a reddish face and a gingery moustache that in its prime might have graced a major. His eye however, was not martial, but blue and mild, watery and wandering, its quest being, I fancy, a convivial acquaintance with enough money and generosity for two instalments of refreshment. His hair, which was scanty, was carefully brushed, and parted at the back even to his collar, and upon it was perched at a slight angle a tall hat ironed beyond endurance. His erect body was encased in a tightly-buttoned frock-coat so shiny that it glistened, and as for his boots, no really softhearted observer could bear to look twice at them, so inadequate were they to our city of rain.