Our father found several blind children, and took them to his home and taught them. By and by some kind friends gave money, and one--Colonel Perkins--gave a fine house to be a school for these children and others; and that was the beginning of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, now a great school where many blind boys and girls learn to read and study, and to play on various instruments, and to help themselves and others in the world. Our father always said, “Help people to help themselves; don’t accustom them to being helped by others.” Another saying of his, perhaps his favorite one, next to the familiar “Let justice be done, if the heavens fall!” was this: “Obstacles are things to be overcome.” Indeed, this was one of the governing principles of his life; and there were few obstacles that did not go down before that keen lance of his, always in rest and ready for a charge. When our father first began his work in philanthropy, some of his friends used to laugh at him, and call him Don Quixote. Especially was this the case when he took up the cause of the idiotic and weak-minded, and vowed that instead of being condemned to live like animals, and be treated as such, they should have their rights as human beings, and should be taught all the more carefully and tenderly because their minds were weak and helpless. “What do you think Howe is going to do now?” cried one gentleman to another, merrily. “He is going to teach the idiots, ha, ha, ha!” and they both laughed heartily, and thought it a very good joke. But people soon ceased to laugh when they saw the helpless creatures beginning to help themselves; saw the girls learning to sew and the boys to work; saw light gradually come into the vacant eyes (dim and uncertain light it might be, but how much better than blank darkness!), and strength and purpose to the nerveless fingers. So the School for Feeble-minded Children was founded, and has been ever since a pleasant place, full of hope and cheer; and when people found that this Don Quixote knew very well the difference between a giant and a windmill, and that he always brought down his giants, they soon ceased to laugh, and began to wonder and admire. All my readers have probably heard about Laura Bridgman, whom he found a little child, deaf, dumb, and blind, knowing no more than an animal, and how he taught her to read and write, to talk with her fingers, and to become an earnest, thoughtful, industrious woman. It is a wonderful story; but it has already been told, and will soon be still more fully told, so I will not dwell upon it now. But I hope you will all read, some day, a Life of our father, and learn about all the things he did, for it needs a whole volume to tell them.