s so much
consideration for their feelings, that the value of the aid thus
afforded can be fully appreciated only by those who have received
it.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FEAR OF GOD AND NO OTHER

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."

Bessie's early education and happy home life counted for much in her
work on behalf of the blind. She knew the advantage of being thrown on
her own resources, of learning the ways of a house and the paths of a
garden. She knew also that the happiness of the blind depends chiefly on
companionship. "A deaf person," she used to say, "is very cheerful
alone, much more cheerful than in society. It is social life that brings
out his privation. But a blind man in a room alone is indeed solitary,
and you see him at his best in society. It is social life which
diminishes his disabilities."

Whilst she acquiesced, therefore, in Levy's wish that the work of the
Institution should be exclusively carried on by blind persons, she was
anxious that they should not be set apart and kept apart from other
workmen.

Her diary for 1858 contains the following passage:

Spoke to Levy about the workpeople in the Repository not having
intercourse enough with those who see, and thought of the
possibility of their belonging to Mr. Maurice's Working Men's
College; I think that might be just the thing. L. asked what I
thought about their attending a Bible Class by any of Mr. Dale's
curates. I said I should like it, provided the mistake was not made
of talking to them upon religion as if it must be a sort of last
resource to the blind, to make up for the want of other things. L.
understood what I meant, and said he was glad I had mentioned it.

Any display of the blind with the object of calling attention to their
affliction, and extorting money on account of it, was extremely painful
to Bessie. She had too much reverence and tenderness for her
fellow-sufferers to make a show of them, and she would not accept help
if it involved any lowering of the tone she hoped to establish in the
workshop. Blind men and women were to be taught that they could do an
honest day's work and earn their own living.

An entry in the diary shows that she had to educate more than her
workpeople before her views were adopted.

L. spoke to me about a suggestion for employing blind beggars to
carry boards to advertise the Associa