The work of the pioneer was eminently congenial to him. He laid the
foundations of the education for the blind in this country on such broad
lines, he so thoroughly thought out and left on record the principles
governing it, that his reports are considered educational classics.
Hence his successor took up a work already well established. The task of
Anagnos was to administer and to enlarge. For this he was admirably
fitted. He greatly augmented the work of the printing in embossed
letters, by raising a Howe Memorial Fund, largely increasing, also, the
financial assets of the Institution.
His most striking achievement was the foundation and maintenance of a
kindergarten for the blind, the first of its kind in the world. Both he
and sister Julia were extremely fond of children. She had been greatly
interested in the enterprise, but died while it was still in its
infancy. Her last words were, “Take care of the little blind children.”
Anagnos made very full reports of the work under his charge. After the
death of my sister it fell to my lot to go through these in order to
make sure that the English idioms, so difficult for a foreigner to
catch, were all correct. Thus for some twenty years it was my annual
task to criticize “Michael’s” reports.
The great, square, brown paper envelopes in which these were contained,
directed in my brother-in-law’s beautiful copper-plate hand, were
sometimes greeted with groans on their arrival. For they were due at a
season of the year when I was very busy.
Yet the work was very helpful to me, because it called for careful
consideration of the reasons for or against certain forms of speech.
With the prepositions we had special difficulty. Anagnos, too, as a true
Oriental, possessed a very flowery style which it was necessary to prune
and restrain in order to adapt it to our cold New England climate. At
first he would pile metaphor upon metaphor and add simile to simile
until his sober Puritan sister-in-law stood aghast. We had special
difficulties with the obituaries of deceased benefactors of the
Institution, whose virtues his gratitude painted in the most glowing
colors. To have excellent but matter-of-fact Boston citizens compared to
spreading oak-trees of benevolence seemed to me a trifle incongruous. I
also demurred to “the Ark of the Institution keeping step in the march
of progress.”
Looking back on the matter now, I am inclined to think my brother-in-law
knew human nature better than I did. My work in cutting down the
adjectives of encomium was perhaps supererogatory.
Anagnos found it on the whole very satisfactory. My use of English was
the best in the family, he averred—but then he was a foreigner!
To his countrymen he was always ready to lend a helping hand. On the
wall of his sitting-room hung an immense piece of canvas showing a
ruined Greek temple, done in cross-stitch—“All there is to show, my
dear, for two thousand dollars!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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