Through a singular complication of circumstances I was led to the home of a sister in Chicago, from whom I had long been separated; and by equally singular ways I was also there reunited to three of my brothers (Charles, William and Howard).  Then my veiled vision could not shut out the loved lineaments living in the pictured halls of memory—­the vision of a love-hallowed home, and a mother’s face crowning all.  Scenes and faces gone, passed like a panorama before my mind’s eye, and

    “So the blessed train passed by me,
    But the vision was sealed upon my soul.”

Through the agency of family friends I returned to my birth-place, and with strange and mingled emotions was welcomed back to Baltimore, with kind greetings from relatives and friends.  Some had passed beyond the portal of earthly existence, and others unexpectedly reappeared, among whom was my father, whose face I could not see, but whose emotion betokened great anguish at the sight of his blind daughter.  Oh how many memories must have passed through his mind, as he clasped to his heart his chastened, motherless child, and, while other loves and other ties were his, “the shades of friends departed” as told by Longfellow must have entered a weird train, and amid other angel footsteps must have come—­

    “That being beauteous
      Who unto his youth was given;
    More than all things else to love him,
      And is now a saint in Heaven.”

Notwithstanding so many former attempts at the restoration of my sight, another effort was made, involving a trip to New York, where a most painful operation was undergone.  But, alas! although a brief period was accorded me, in which I saw with rapture objects around me, it was only to be shut out into utter and hopeless sightlessness.  As the wounded hare seeks some cover remote from the human ken, so did my sinking soul seek the solace of solitude, where for twenty-four hours I searched my nature to its depths, and made resolves for my future course, known only to God and pitying angels.  They alone comforted me then, and they have sustained and soothed through every succeeding trial!

CHAPTER III.

    “The saddest day hath gleams of light,
      The darkest wave hath bright foam near it. 
    And, twinkles o’er the cloudiest night,
      Some solitary star to cheer it.”

In the year 1855, my heart still heavy with its burden of blindness, I entered the Baltimore Institution for the Blind.  With kind friends to aid and cheer me, high hopes, rich resolutions and ambitious aims to inspire, I commenced the course of study which was to fit me for my new avocations.  Ofttimes was I found in the deep valley of humiliation, where I sat me down and sighed; and in many a “Garden of Gethsemane” were seen the trickling “tears of blood.”  The cross and the crucifixion came, but afterwards came the resurrection of dead hopes and angels bearing the crown.