Almost any passage quoted from Howe’s reports has the same quality. It is written by a Christian missionary, who is also, within his own field, a scientific man. He is exuberant, he is triumphant, he is inexhaustible. No matter how familiar be the theme, it is always new in his hands. Turn almost at random to his letters or papers; “Do not prevent your blind child from developing, as he grows up, courage, self-reliance, generosity, and manliness of character, by excessive indulgence, by sparing him thought and anxiety and hard work, and by giving him undeserved preference over others. If he lounges in a rocking-chair or on the sofa cushions, don’t pat him and say, ‘the poor dear child is tired’; but rout him out and up just as you would do with any boy who was contracting lazy habits.”... The following is from a report upon some cases of arrested development: “It is true that these children and youth speak and read but little, and that little very imperfectly compared with others of their age; but if one brings the case home, and supposes these to be his own children, it will not seem a small matter that a daughter, who, it was thought, would never know a letter, can now read a simple story, and a son, who could not say ‘father,’ can now distinctly repeat a prayer to his Father in heaven.”... Or take some words from a private letter:-- “The great lesson--the hard lesson--your son has first to learn is--_to be blind_; to live in the world without light; to look upon what of existence is yet vouchsafed him as a blessing and a trust, and to resolve to spend it gratefully, cheerfully, and conscientiously, in the service of his Maker and for the happiness of those about him.” It was a matter of accident that the blind should have engrossed Howe’s attention earlier than the feeble-minded, for whom he began his labors in 1846, and for whom a State school was, through his efforts, established in Massachusetts, in 1852. This institution was quite as exclusively Howe’s creation as was the School for the Blind, and over it also he extended his domestic influence. “He passed like light through the rooms. Charley Smith, gentlest of fifty-year-old children, would leave his wooden horse to run to him. They loved him, the children whom he had rescued from worse than death. When he died they grieved for him after their fashion, and among all the tributes to his memory, none was more touching than theirs: ‘He will take care of the blind in heaven. Won’t he take care of us too?’”