And yet, alas! there is no condition of life without some remote or contingent sorrow. Many a scene have I witnessed connected with this very subject, that would wring the tears out of any eye, and find a tender pulse in the hardest heart. It is indeed a melancholy alternative that devotes the poor sightless lad to an employment that is ultimately productive of so much happiness to himself and others. This alternative is seldom resorted to, unless when some poor child--perhaps a favourite--is deprived of sight by the terrible ravages of the small-pox. In life there is scarcely any thing more touching than to witness in the innocent invalid the first effects, both upon himself and his parents, of this woeful privation. The utter helplessness of the pitiable darkling, and his total dependence upon those around him--his unacquaintance with the relative situation of all the places that were familiar to him--his tottering and timid step, and his affecting call of “Mammy, where are you?” joined to the bitter consciousness on her part that the light of affection and innocence will never sparkle in those beloved eyes again--all this constitutes a scene of deep and bitter sorrow. When, however, the sense of his bereavement passes away, and the cherished child grows up to the proper age, a fiddle is procured for him by his parents, if they are able, and if not, a subscription is made up among their friends and neighbours to buy him one. All the family, with tears in their eyes, then kiss and take leave of him; and his mother, taking him by the hand, leads him, as had been previously arranged, to the best fiddler in the neighbourhood, with whom he is left as an apprentice. There is generally no fee required, but he is engaged to hand his master all the money he can make at dances, from the time he is proficient enough to play at them. Such is the simple process of putting a blind boy in the way of becoming acquainted with the science of melody. In my native parish there were four or five fiddlers--all good in their way; but the Paganini of the district was the far-famed Mickey M’Rorey. Where Mickey properly lived, I never could actually discover, and for the best reason in the world--he was not at home once in twelve months. As Colley Cibber says in the play, he was “a kind of a here-and-thereian--a stranger nowhere.” This, however, mattered little; for though perpetually shifting day after day from place to place, yet it somehow happened that nobody ever was at a loss where to find him. The truth is, he never felt disposed to travel _incog._, because he knew that his interest must suffer by doing so; the consequence was, that wherever he went, a little nucleus of local fame always attended him, which rendered it an easy matter to find his whereabouts.