ical privation to reduce them to a condition below the high
level to which they had resolved to attain. Christian faith animates and
supports the former, physical and mental force will carry on the latter.
In rare cases, Bessie's was one of them, the two are combined. But there
is a third and perhaps a more numerous class--those who consider
themselves as unjustly afflicted, and look upon mankind as enemies.
Mankind is the majority, the blind are the minority. They speak of the
attitude of "the majority," the neglect and selfishness of "the
majority," the duty of "the majority." Their only outlook seems to be in
restrictions to be applied to the more fortunate. They are the
one-legged men who want to abolish foot races. They seek not so much to
raise those that are cast down, as to abase those who stand erect.
Bessie's knowledge of the blind would not have been complete if she had
remained ignorant of this large class.

She had deep sympathy with those who were embittered by sorrow and loss.
She could feel for the man upon whom blindness entails sudden collapse;
all his prospects shattered; himself and those dependent on him plunged
into poverty. He sees himself set aside and made of no account. He
forgets the blind whom he has known and neglected without any thought
of injuring, and suspects every man who is indifferent to him of being a
secret and cruel enemy.

Numerous letters addressed or submitted to her show that the morbid
bitterness of many a heart had been revealed to her, and that she had
been urged, again and again, to lead a forlorn hope, and storm the
heights that were held by the sighted.

She knew what it was to hear her "humble work and low aims" spoken of
with contempt, and to find that those whom she loved and honoured were
objects of ridicule to the advanced thinkers amongst the blind. She
could not work with men and women of such a type, but her sympathy gave
her faultless intuitions with regard to them. Underneath a hard,
aggressive exterior she felt the beating of a heart that was torn and
bleeding. She could make allowance for wild words and angry
exclamations, she could try to understand their meaning, but she was
never dragged into the whirlpool of mere clamour, nor wrecked upon the
hidden rocks of despair.

A few extracts will show the dangers to which she was exposed, dangers
not unfamiliar to many of those who read the story of her life.

We are all of one opinion that the blind o