er hair, which, as a memento, is ever
magnetically associated with the "loved ones gone before."

Returning to Chicago, I found my husband, whose health was far worse than
when I saw him in Galveston. This, together with a combination of
surrounding circumstances, suggested the project of writing up "The World
as I have found it," and I spent the greater part of the winter of 1877-8
in this work.

If it should appear to my friends and readers, that I found only the
"sunny side" of life, and they should wonder why I so seldom saw the
shadow, or received the thrust of unkindness, I can simply say that I was
almost universally so well received, that the few cases of unkind
treatment became the exception and not the rule, and these were generally
so bitterly repented, and so amply amended, that I felt it would be an
act of ingratitude to note them in my experiences.

Hoping that these last missives to my kind and noble patrons will be as
well received as was the first humble effort of my girlhood--"Incidents in
the Life of a Blind Girl," I can only add in conclusion, that if any one
of the patient followers of my wanderings has found aught of sufficient
interest to while away the tedium of an otherwise weary hour, or gleaned
from the dross a single "golden grain," I will be amply recompensed.

HELP THE BLIND TO HELP THEMSELVES.

Throughout the entire length my unpretending offering my aim has been, as
far as was compatible with a personal history, to make my pages
interesting to the general public, but I cannot close without addressing
some especial words to those, who, like myself, must be content to live
with vision veiled from the world's transcendant beauties, and whose
life-paths from a variety of causes seem ofttimes utterly rayless.

Blindness has been universally regarded as one of the most terrible
afflictions of an adverse fate, nor can it be denied that it is one which
requires a great amount of grace, and all the reason and judgment one can
command, to bear the burden with any degree of patience, much less with
perfect resignation.

It is so often the result of impaired health, while the severe test of
maltreatment or even the most skillful treatment, tends to deplete the
system and depress the spirits.

Again, the blind are in the majority of cases the children of poor
parents, and subject to all the neglect and exposure incident to poverty,
while, if they are born in affluence, they are so pett