.

Our lives are necessarily narrow. Blind people, however keen their
understanding, and however clearly and sympathetically those around
them may by description make up for their lack of perception, must,
perforce, lead lives which lack the vivid actuality of the lives of
others. To those of them who have always been blind the world, outside
the reach of their hands, is a mystery which can only be solved by
description. And where shall they turn for more potent description
than to the pages in which those gifted with the mastery of language
have set down their impressions of the world around them?

And for people whose sight has left them after the world and much that
is in it has become familiar to them, reading must mean more than it
does to any but the most studious of those who can see. Some are so
fortunate as to be able to enlist or command the services of an
intelligent reader, but this is not given to any but a small minority,
and even to these the ability to read at will, without the necessity of
calling in the aid of another, is a matter of real moment, helping as
it does to do away with that feeling of dependence which is the
greatest disadvantage of blindness.

All this Mr. Richard King knows nearly as well as I do, for he has been
a splendidly helpful friend to the men who were blinded in the War, and
none know better than he how greatly they have gained by learning to
read anew, making the fingers as they travel over the dotted characters
replace the eyes of which they have been despoilt.

Disaster sometimes leads to good fortune, and the disaster which befell
the blinded soldier has given to the service of the blind world
generally the affection and sympathy which Mr. Richard King so
abundantly possesses. Your reading of this book--and if you have only
borrowed it I hope that these words may induce you to buy a copy--will
help to enable more blind folk to read than would otherwise have been
the case, and thus you will have added to the happiness of the world,
just as the perusal of "Over the Fireside" will have added to your own
happiness.

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Draw your chair up nearer to the fireside.

It is the hour of twilight. Soon, so very soon, another of Life's
little days will have silently crept behind us into the long dim limbo
of half-forgotten years.

We are alone--you and I. Yet between us--unseen, but very real--are
Memories linking us to one another and to the ge