many unexpected things happened, and we
felt we could not entrust our business to any one who did not possess
all his faculties. We meant to be very kind, and we thought every word
we said was true, but was it true? Did that man sell our goods with his
eyes, or did he sell them by using his tongue and his personality to
persuade customers to patronize us? If he had a boy to go about with
him, could he not talk as convincingly, work as hard, and, indeed, might
he not put forth a greater effort to extend our business and make
himself invaluable to us? This is a typical case, and one that occurs
almost daily. So it is in all lines of work the blind man or woman
attempts. A blind piano tuner asks for work from house to house, just as
a sighted tuner has to do, but, whereas we sometimes employ the latter,
we refuse the former, saying, we could not trust our instrument to the
hands of a blind man, and maybe we offer him a small piece of silver to
lessen the hurt we have unwittingly inflicted. Perhaps a man with
defective eyesight asks to clean house or help in the garden, or work on
a ranch, or perform some light task in a store. The same condition
obtains. We are so hurried these days, we must have the work done with
the greatest possible expediency, and so we can not entrust it to any
one who is handicapped, although we are sorry, and really wish we could
do something for such people. And so sometimes, men who started out with
high hopes and lofty ideals are forced to the streets, there to depend
upon the spasmodic charity of the passerby, and to attract this wavering
attention of the public, the man resorts to all sorts of subterfuges,
from holding up pencils and gum to grinding out popular tunes on a
wheezing old hand organ. Sometimes these men have families and feel they
must make this effort to maintain them. Many of them try to sell
newspapers on the corners of our principal streets, but here, too, the
competition is very great, and little boys patrol the curb, holding the
ever-ready paper under the nose of the hurrying pedestrian who, though
he may be conscious of the blind man selling in front of a building,
thinks he can not spare time to go to him for a paper, and so snatches
one from the waiting boy, throws him the pennies, and jumps on a moving
car. Selling newspapers is better suited to a blind man than almost any
other line of business. I mean the man who has never learned a trade, or
who has no special professi