It would seem that the fingers are capable of grasping almost everything that the eye embraces, though of course more slowly, and from the wonderful acuteness of which they are susceptible has grown the popular impression that the blind can feel colors.  I have been asked this question many thousand times, and have invariably replied that we can no more feel colors than the deaf can see sounds or the dumb sing psalms.  I am aware that it is stated by some eminent writers that the sense of touch in some persons has reached this perfection, but I have many reasons to doubt it.  I have no personal object in contradicting this statement, other than to correct a popular error.  Should be glad if it were true.  It has been accounted for by scientific men upon this hypothesis:  that colors differ in temperature, that red is warmer than yellow, and yellow warmer than green, and so on through the spectrum.  That violet is a cold color as its rays are less refracted, that these differences are appreciable to delicate fingers.  I have tried many experiments both with my own fingers and with persons at our several institutions, who, like myself, were born without sight, and, have never yet found one who could form the faintest idea of colors from impressions received through the fingers.  Indeed there is nothing in tangible qualities that suggests color, except differences in texture.  We may feel that a piece of broad-cloth has a harsh texture, and call it black, or a soft texture, and call it drab or brown.  In this we may guess right, for it is only a guess after all.  Wool buyers and dealers in cloth judge frequently of their quality by touch; and it is true that we who are without sight come to be very expert in judging of the quality of cloths, furs, &c.  But, to one who has never seen light, there is no suggestion of color through finger perception.

Between sound and color there is a much closer analogy traceable, as both are the result of vibration.  The same language is used to express the qualities of each.

We talk of harmony in sounds and harmony in colors, of lights and shades, of chromatics, blending, softness, sweetness, harshness, high, low, bright, dull, &c.

May not a grand anthem or chorus be to the mind of one who has never seen the light, what a fine picture is to one who has never heard sounds.  I should not be surprised to hear that some blind Yankee or Frenchman has invented a telephone through which we can hear in the rippling brooks and bubbling fountains the color of their waters, in the song of birds the gorgeous tints of their plumage, and in the distant roar of Niagara, the mighty grandeur of its scenery.  To an imaginative mind a well tuned, well voiced organ may be made to represent all the colors of the rainbow, from the faintest violet of the piccolo to the darkest crimson of the sub-bass.  Some blind person on being asked what he supposed red to be like, answered “Like the sound of a trumpet.”  He