close of the American Revolution James Holman, a
British naval officer, lost his eyesight while in Africa. He was then
about twenty-five years old. Later he became one of the best known
travelers of his day. The world was told of his travels in lectures and
in books, and others were also inspired to travel. "What is the use of
traveling to one who cannot see?" he was asked at one time. "Does every
traveler see all he describes?" he replied. He said that he felt sure he
visited, when on his travels, as many interesting places as others, and
that, by having the things described to him on the spot, he could form
as correct a judgment as his own sight would have enabled him to do.

In 1779 Richmond, Virginia, gave birth to James Wilson, who lost his
sight when he was four years old, because of smallpox. He was then on
shipboard, and was taken to Belfast, Ireland, where he grew to manhood.
When a boy he delivered newspapers to subscribers who lived as far as
five miles from the city. When fifteen he used part of his earnings to
buy books which he persuaded other boys to read to him. At twenty-one he
entered an institution for the blind, for fuller instruction. Then he
joined with a circle of mechanics in forming a reading society. One
friend promised to read to him every evening such books as he could
procure. The hours for reading were from nine to one every night in
summer and from seven to eleven every night in the winter. "Often I
have traveled three or four miles, in a severe winter night, to be at my
post in time," he said once. "Perished with cold and drenched with rain,
I have many a time sat down and listened for several hours together to
the writings of Plutarch, Rollins, or Clarendon." After seven or eight
years of this training, he was "acquainted with almost every work in the
English language" his biographer says, perhaps a little extravagantly.
His education he used in literary work.

B. B. Bowen was a Massachusetts boy just a century ago. When a babe he
lost his sight. In 1833 Dr. Howe--husband of Julia Ward Howe--selected
him as one of six blind boys on whom he was to make the first
experiments in the instruction of the blind. Later he wrote a book of
which eighteen thousand copies were sold.

Another of the men who proved the loss of sight was not a bar to
successful work was Thomas R. Lounsbury, the Yale scholar whose studies
in Chaucer and Shakespeare made him famous. Toward the close of his busy
life h