The "Association for Promoting the General Welfare of the Blind," founded in London by Miss E. Gilbert, is an example of a very practical organisation for the employment of the blind, which has been alluded to in our former reports. It gives work, in various ways, to about 170 adult blind persons, many of whom were previously begging in the streets. The deficiency of their earnings is supplied by annual subscriptions and legacies, the usual sources of support in Great Britain for the benevolent institutions. Such institutions will never be self-sustaining. But the support of an industrial association which enables every blind person to earn 100, 200, or 300 dollars a year, is certainly better than to throw such persons upon the charities of the wayside, or to consign them to pensioned idleness. In the autumn of this year Bessie was at Chichester, and in addition to the difficulty of walking, which she experienced after any time of hard work, she began to discover that vibration from any great or sudden noise affected her painfully. She drove with her father and a sister from Chichester to Kingly Bottom, a vale in the South Downs, for the last day's shooting of the rifle volunteer corps in September 1866. The sharp crack of the rifles tried her greatly, and brought on so much pain that she was glad to accept a seat in the carriage of a friend and go home, instead of waiting, as the Bishop wished to do, for the end of the match. The noise seemed to exhaust her. During the autumn of 1866 Mr. F. Green, who for many years had rendered great service by his work on the Committee, presented to the Association five shares of L100 in the Marine Insurance Company, of which he was a director. They yielded at that time L40 a year, and the gift was a source of much gratification to Bessie. She was at Chichester in December, and wrote thence on the 21st to her widowed sister, Mrs. Elliot, dwelling on the service she could render to others: "Having you must make all the difference," she says, when alluding to a succession of troubles which had fallen upon Lady Minto, with whom Mrs. Elliot was staying. "Really there is not and will not be any lack of work for you. You have had, I should think, quite as much as you could do for some time past.... There is a chance of Tom's coming in January.... I suppose you know all about him and his doings. I can't think how he would have got on without you." Then she gives news from home: