might be very slender and only partly visible. There is but one conclusion to draw a cane is useless.

In reality it is an impediment. A man may often overtake people going in the same direction, and may often have to pass people, silently standing with their backs toward him. A cane would not help him to pass these people, and they would not see him approaching. By training one's ears to catch the sounds of footsteps and voices, and by learning to use one's sense of feeling, one can pass them easily, as a normal person would.

I think that any fear of danger from vehicles can be dismissed just as quickly. In suburban or country districts one may often have occasion to follow muchtravelled roads. Then there is only one thing to do-it is to keep well on the right-hand side of the road. There is little danger that an automobile will come over on the right-hand side of the road to run over a man, especially when he is well on the side and has the right of way. In a city, almost the only time one need fear passing vehicles is in crossing streets, and here again there is only one choice. A person can do positively nothing but wait until the street is quiet, and then cross. If there is an unusual amount of traffic, it saves time simply to ask somebody to assist one across the street. If, in either country or city, an automobile suddenly comes upon one, the driver is not likely to let his machine run over any pedestrian whom he sees; and again I think that if the driver cannot see a man, he could hardly be expected to see him any quicker when the man carries a cane. Here again there is but one conclusion to draw a cane is useless. In fact, I believe that if one depended on a cane to help him and warn others of his handicap he would take less care to be on the side of the road, trusting the driver would look out for him, and thus would be unnecessarily endangered.

Following the loss of my sight, I was placed in the California School for the Blind, which I attended for upward of six years. During this period there was not one student who used a cane. In fact, they derisively called blind people who did "Cane-ites." I shall always remember those boys as the finest, brav

est, most independent lot I have ever known.

The one recognized object of the school was to train the students to be as nearly as possible normal men and women. I came in personal contact with approximately thirty teachers, matrons, supervisors, and other officers, not one of whom, from the superintendent himself to the trained nurse in the hospital, ever suggested the use of a cane. Three of these teachers were totally blind and two partially, yet none of them used or ever advised a single student to use a cane. Indeed, the matron in my dormitory building once sharply reproved me for using a cane on account of a sprained ankle. When I made my explanation, she tersely ordered me to the hospital and to "put away that cane.' One teacher has now worked with the blind for nearly forty years, another twenty-five; and the matron of whom I have spoken has held her position for twenty-four years.

While at the school, I observed that the very small boys played freely and happily with no thought of ever using a cane. As they grew in years and experience they gained more ability in moving about. To have put canes in their hands at any time would have been simply to restrict them; and it is evident the school has no idea of imposing any such restriction. It has a large swimming-tank in which all the students are expected to go, and even taught to swim. The boys are also required to attend regular gymnasium classes. The instructor has always encouraged apparatus work, such as jumping over booms and bucks, climbing ladders and swinging in rings, swinging on a trapeze and using parallel bars. He is also in the habit of taking the class out on the athletic field, where he divides it into two teams, matching them in a game of push-ball. Sometimes his exercises consist of running. If on the athletic field, the boys run in pairs, one who can see a little with one who cannot, because they must run in a circle. But sometimes the instructor takes them on the cement sidewalk just outside the school wall. Here they run singly, successfully avoiding each other and all accidents. All this can only preclude any dependence on a cane.

There is a certain deadly symbolism

behind the use of a cane by the blind, and it is this that I at present most deplore. The general public invariably thinks of a blind man as carrying a cane. Ask any one at all who has not been previously enlightened if he thinks blind men always carry canes, and your answer will certainly be in the affirmative. Thus it is that the cane has become the symbol of blindness, and of all its horror and hideous dependence. The one idea that has been impressed upon me during the last eight years is that I must take my place in the world just like a normal man. Since the cane is the symbol of blindness, if one carries a cane, he is going to feel his handicap. But, on the other hand, if he is capable of going around without a cane, he acquires new courage and manliness. He merely remembers that he is a man, and that he has a man's work to do. For seven years I honestly believed it would never be possible for me to learn my way around the place in which I now live. When I finally made the attempt, which proved successful, I started by

carrying a cane; but now I know it is more desirable by far to walk without one. When a blind man lays aside his cane, he rises incredibly in self-respect. He distinctly feels that he has cast aside all the hideousness of blindness; and when his friends understand his feelings and are accustomed to seeing him without a cane, I am confident their respect for him is greatly enhanced.

Finally, those who advise the use of a cane usually conclude by saying that there is nothing conspicuous in it, because a lot of men carry canes. This is certainly true, but it merely confirms my statement that a cane is useless; so, why carry one? In my opinion any one of the numerous objections I have cited is sufficient reason for discarding any dependence on a cane. My only concern in writing this very frank and thorough discussion is to help correct the noxious impression that all blind people should be "addicted" to the use of canes. This impression must vanish before the best results in the work for the blind can be attained.

Jesting aside, might it not be possible to try this experiment of printing a few poems, of old, established merit, in these household books read so devotedly, trusted so implicitly? It would be poetic justice upon advertisers.

T

HE tale about the old lady who committed suicide because she was so tired of buttoning and unbuttoning always roused my sympathy; somewhat, my wonder too, for no lady of any age who has come within my observation has seemed to regard the diurnal task in such Unbuttoning a light.

Buttoning and

But from the average male standpoint it is a very affliction-at least the buttoning. He can get through the unbuttoning in short order: preparing for bed is a simple matter, though I have known or rather heard of those of so prudent a nature that they complicated it by anticipating a part of the morning's buttoning-that part which is represented by sleeve links and shirt studs. I detest such precautionary beings. Sufficient unto the morrow is the evil thereof.

Certainly this of buttoning or dressing is one of the great evils of the usual morrow, and it is unfortunate it should beset a man, before he has yet gathered himself, at very dawn.

When I was younger-I had almost said when I was young, but tact is an amenity as necessary to pleasant intercourse with yourself as with others-when I was younger I gained some consolation for advancing toward that stage when others less considerate would refer to the time when I was young, from the assertion of my elders that I would then find it easier to get up in the morning. They misled me, for though this was in itself the truth they neglected to add the corollary that any gain in this regard would be offset by loss of speed in the matter of dressing.

Time was when at a pinch five minutes sufficed me: as an undergraduate-but this was at a comparatively beardless period-I have sprung from my bed on the first note of the lecture bell, and in the seven minutes latitude allowed, have reached the lecture hall sufficiently clothed, and squeezed through the door in time to avoid a cut. And if I go backward a briefer space of years from then than I have now gone

forward I come to the achievement of a respectable appearance at the breakfast-table three minutes after my head left the pillow. But I must fairly say that this was during a brief space in which I followed a method soon discovered and discouraged: if I removed my clothes not by individual garments but by sections, which entailed infinite care and considerable wriggling, I could preserve them in those very relations to each other that they bore when they enclosed my person, the outer ones incasing the inner, sleeve within sleeve, leg within leg.

Still, it is almost true to say that my present best speed has increased over what once it was, tenfold, and what I first counted a malady peculiar to myself is common to my contemporaries. They are singularly apathetic about it: they accept it as a necessary evil at the same moment that they acknowledge it an utter waste of time that might be profitably spent-in sweetly prolonged sleep, for instance-and a barely tolerable bore as well.

As such, a moment's reckoning reveals it: through the whole course of three score years or so--unless you favor union suits, and then you are probably of the sort that wear spats-you must incase yourself in twelve distinct garments; each of these, according to its nature, requires buttoning, or lacing, or tying, or linking of some kind. But even this is the better part of the general process. The bath has its compensations. It is not wholly a bore, for there is a pleasure in the tingle and the glow that follows. But what can be said for the shave? I know there are some who, numbering it among the minor arts, take an artist's joy in the sheen of the blade and its gentle rasping of the cheek; but they belong to an earlier, more leisurely generation, and one comparatively impervious to the persuasive "ad." Those of my time were long since flattered into the use of Gillette, Autostrop, or Gem; they are practical implements and I am for them, but by the very characteristic that gives them their generic name, they have robbed the daily shave of a certain dashing quality which was, I think, intriguing to women and gave the use of the old razor an adventurous charm.

To my own mind shaving is beyond all comparison the worst step in the process

of becoming presentable, and as it is by much the longest and cannot be shortened, it makes any considerable reduction in time impossible.

Indeed, I count the time wholly lost in which I schemed through several years to overcome the evil of dressing by reducing its length. There is the system of the schoolboy Owen Johnson told about: he applied the principles of scientific management by so accurately arranging his clothes, when he took them off, as to proximity and order, that he could seize them and array himself with an absolute minimum of effort. But had he in reality done other than transfer a portion of his task to the previous night?

No, I am convinced the aim should rather be to reduce the boredom, not the time, and this the invention of the safety razor has made possible; you can shave with such a razor in the dark and for the same reason you can shave with your eyes upon a book. Such is the true way to evade this curse of civilization, the boredom of dressing: read while you dress, and you will be hardly conscious of the mechanical operations of your limbs and fingers as they go through the dreary process for the many thousandth time. Begin to read when you begin to shave-your book propped upon a convenient shelf, its pages kept open by a jar of vaseline, a tin of talcum powder, any such handy articles of the toilet, and continue until at last you must glance at the mirror to tighten the cravat and brush the hair.

But the book must be selected with care, particularly in the case of a commuter whose time is sharply limited; such am I, and, at least for such, a narrative, as too absorbing, is dangerous. I have found myself, at the end of an episode, with most of my few minutes run out, the lather dry upon my unshorn chin, and the whole operation to begin over again. The short essay is the thing. Francis Bacon, for one with a taste for him, is almost ideal; or if he seem antiquated by modern standards, there are "Little Essays by George Santayana," of a page or so in length; at the end of each a man can glance at his watch to get his bearings. But every one must choose according to his taste, only avoiding fiction or history for such works as more gently beguile you from the irksomeness of the task.

Nor is the advantage only that of so rendering you oblivious: have not the advertisements apprised us what marvels of self-improvement can be achieved with fifteen minutes reading a day?

On the Impulse to Educate

S children, my inseparables and I were allowed to roam the country-side more or less unrestrained; every foot of ground within a radius of two or three miles around the town in which we lived was beloved by us for some endearing charm. By some instinct we knew the creek bank where the first violet would blossom-under the two elm trees half-way between the railroad track and the First Woods; we knew where the marsh marigolds were thickest in the deeps of the swamp beyond a screen of elder that hid their vivid yellow; we watched for the budding wild iris in among last year's cattails, which rattled crisply in the spring winds. All these things we learned for ourselves. We gathered strange flowers in the woods and took them home to compare with illustrations in our wild-flower books; we crossed the corner of a wheat-field when the wheat was long enough to tangle across our toes, and trip the unwary, and when we stumbled upon the nest of some field-bird in the wheat, we marked the spots on her breast and the color of the eggs, that we might learn her name from the bird book. Of course we made mistakes-who could learn to distinguish the different thrushes and wrens in such wise? But we preferred to go our way untutored and untaught.

We

The mother of one of us-and he was as seldom "one of us" as possible, on that account-used to go with us sometimes, and then our aimless wanderings were made strenuous and purposeful—we might as well have been, then, a nature-study class. stopped on a hilltop one time when she was with us to talk of our aspiration of heaven-there is but a short step from a hilltop to heaven when the slope is a long one, snowy with spring beauties that stir a little in the breeze, and when on the horizon is a tall white cloud, like a column of smoke on a still day, drifting. Mary said that in heaven she wanted to know Abraham and Moses and Saint John. I was astonished; child of Presbyterianism as I was, those names were as mythical to me as Diana and