This kind of life, however, has fitted me to enter upon a systematic course of study, which I did at the age of sixteen.  I was received as a pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind in 1844.  I entered in a good, healthy condition of body and mind.  Found there boys and girls like myself, without sight, yet earnestly engaged in pursuing the various branches of English education.  Many of them were like myself, full of life, fond of fun and mischief.  Many laughable incidents and anecdotes characteristic of such an institution are fresh in my memory, which, I should be pleased to relate, did they illustrate the subject in hand.  Here I found sight, which I had always supposed so necessary, somewhat at a discount.  I discovered that books, slates, maps, globes, diagrams, &c., could be seen through the fingers, and that children could learn quite as rapidly in this way as with sight.  I was not long, either, in discovering that the older pupils and graduates were intelligent, accomplished and refined; that they were treated more as equals by the officers, and that they were trotted out to show off the merits of the institution, while we young blockheads were kept in the background.  This, I think, did much toward inspiring me with ambition.  My progress at first was slow, having to learn how to use the appliances.  My fingers must be trained, my memory disciplined and my habits of inattention corrected.

No effort was made, however, to take the mirthfulness out of me, and I doubt if anything could have succeeded in this.  My first introduction to tangible literature was in placing my hand on a page of the Old Testament in embossed print.  At first I could feel nothing like letters or any regular characters, only a roughness as though the paper had been badly wrinkled.  A card was then placed in my hand on which the alphabet was printed in very large type, and my attention called to each letter.  My fingers, then soft and supple, were not long in tracing the outlines of each character, and, my memory being naturally retentive, I was soon able to distinguish each letter, and give its name as my finger was placed on it.  Another card was then given me in smaller type, which I mastered in the same way, and so on till I could read our smallest print.

I have been thus minute in describing the rudimentary process of finger training, that my readers may understand how it is possible for the fingers to be made useful to the blind.  To show how quick is the perception through this avenue to the mind, it should be known that we cannot feel a whole word at once, but a single letter.  And yet some of us are able to read more than a hundred words per minute, and to trace on raised maps boundary lines, rivers, mountain chains, lakes, straits, gulfs, bays, to find the location of towns, islands, &c.