In my Junior year, my eyes, after an attack of measles, became so weak that I could not use them more than an hour in a day, and I was [31] obliged to rely mainly upon others for the prosecution of my studies during the remainder of the college course. I hardly know now whether to be glad or sorry for this deprivation. But for this, I might have been a man of learning. I was certainly very fond of my studies, especially of the mathematics and chemistry. I mention it the rather, because the whole course and tendency of my mind has been in other directions. But Euclid's Geometry was the most interesting book to me in the college course; and next, Mrs. B.'s Chemistry: the first, because the intensest thinking is doubtless always the greatest possible intellectual enjoyment; and the second, because it opened to me my first glance into the wonders of nature. I remember the trembling pride with which, one day in the Junior year, I took the head of the class, while all the rest shrunk from it, to demonstrate some proposition in the last book of Euclid. At Commencement, when my class graduated, the highest part was assigned to me. "Pretty well for a blind boy," my father said, when I told him of it; it was all he said, though I knew that nothing in the world could have given him more pleasure. But if it was vanity then, or if it seem such now to mention it, I may be pardoned, perhaps, for it was the end of all vanity, effort, or pretension to be a learned man. I remember when I once told Channing of this, and said that but for the loss of sight I thought I should have devoted myself to the pursuits of learning, his [32] reply was, "You were made for something better." I do not know how that may be; but I think that my deprivation, which lasted for some years, was not altogether without benefit to myself. I was thrown back upon my own mind, upon my own resources, as I should never otherwise have been. I was compelled to think--in such measure as I am able--as I should not otherwise have done. I was astonished to find how dependent I had been upon books, not only for facts, but for the very courses of reasoning. To sit down solitary and silent for hours, and to pursue a subject through all the logical steps for myself,--to mould the matter in my own mind without any foreign aid,--was a new task for me. Ravignan, the celebrated French preacher, has written a little book on the Jesuit discipline and course of studies, in which he says that the one or two years of silence appointed to the pupil absolute seclusion from society and from books too were the most delightful and profitable years of his novitiate. I think I can understand how that might be true in more ways than one. Madame Guyon's direction for prayer to pause upon each petition till it is thoroughly understood and felt had great wisdom in it. We read too much. For the last thirty years I have read as much as I pleased, and probably more than was good for me.