n yesterday."

She had written to Mr. Kingsley for permission to set Elizabeth's
"Chapel Song" to her own music, and received an assurance that he would
be very glad if any words of his could be useful to her, or any work of
hers.

In September she was again in London for a Committee meeting, and there
were the usual applications to consider, and the reading and talking
with the workpeople. She inspected the new rooms and the boarding-house,
and talked over the possibility of Levy's going to France upon business.
After her return to Chichester and for many months we find almost daily
entries "Embossed much French and dictated a great deal for L."

During this summer she was oppressed by the consciousness that the
mental training of the blind had not taken its due place in her scheme.
She wanted to find something that would afford instruction and at the
same time recreation for the poor, something to awaken and enlarge their
interest in the external world. She found that the perceptive faculties
which take the place of sight suffer from a want of due cultivation, and
she wished to remedy this by enabling the blind to obtain information
about natural objects. Something, she thought, might be done by a
development of the sense of touch, and by arranging a Natural History
Museum in such a manner that every specimen could be handled. In
connection with the Museum, she proposed to form a department for the
exhibition of inventions in aid of the blind. These were to be arranged
without reference to the "sighted," and in such a manner that the blind
could easily examine and compare them. An exhibition of this kind was
opened in Paris in October 1886, but the idea originated in the fertile
brain of Bessie Gilbert.

Meanwhile the Museum for her poor was the first thing to be started, and
she prepared for it by visiting the Chichester Museum. In September we
read:

"Went to Museum to ask the cost of stuffing birds and about collections
of eggs, and the order of arranging birds. Settled with E. that she
should ask Mr. ---- to shoot some birds, and with Mr. H. that he should
tell Smith the bird stuffer to come to me next Wednesday." Mr. ----
seems to have had only moderate success with his gun, as a later entry
records, "Received two birds from Mr. ----." There are frequent accounts
of "looking over eggs," "arranging glass case for the stuffed birds, and
talking about the Museum to all who could give advice or make useful
sugg