Blind people generally who have seen the light know what it is to miss the light.  Those who have gone blind since they were twenty years old —­their lives are unendingly dreary.  But they can be taught to use their hands and to employ themselves at a great many industries.  That association from which this draws its birth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has taught its blind to make many things.  They make them better than most people, and more honest than people who have the use of their eyes.  The goods they make are readily salable.  People like them.  And so they are supporting themselves, and it is a matter of cheer, cheer.  They pass their time now not too irksomely as they formerly did.

What this association needs and wants is $15,000.  The figures are set down, and what the money is for, and there is no graft in it or I would not be here.  And they hope to beguile that out of your pockets, and you will find affixed to the programme an opportunity, that little blank which you will fill out and promise so much money now or to-morrow or some time.  Then, there is another opportunity which is still better, and that is that you shall subscribe an annual sum.

I have invented a good many useful things in my time, but never anything better than that of getting money out of people who don’t want to part with it.  It is always for good objects, of course.  This is the plan:  When you call upon a person to contribute to a great and good object, and you think he should furnish about $1,000, he disappoints you as like as not.  Much the best way to work him to supply that thousand dollars is to split it into parts and contribute, say a hundred dollars a year, or fifty, or whatever the sum maybe.  Let him contribute ten or twenty a year.  He doesn’t feel that, but he does feel it when you call upon him to contribute a large amount.  When you get used to it you would rather contribute than borrow money.

I tried it in Helen Keller’s case.  Mr. Hutton wrote me in 1896 or 1897 when I was in London and said:  “The gentleman who has been so liberal in taking care of Helen Keller has died without making provision for her in his will, and now they don’t know what to do.”  They were proposing to raise a fund, and he thought $50,000 enough to furnish an income of $2400 or $2500 a year for the support of that wonderful girl and her wonderful teacher, Miss Sullivan, now Mrs. Macy.  I wrote to Mr. Hutton and said:  “Go on, get up your fund.  It will be slow, but if you want quick work, I propose this system,” the system I speak of, of asking people to contribute such and such a sum from year to year and drop out whenever they please, and he would find there wouldn’t be any difficulty, people wouldn’t feel the burden of it.  And he wrote back saying he had raised the $2400 a year indefinitely by that system in, a single afternoon.  We would like to do something just like that to-night.  We will take as many checks as you care to give.  You can leave your donations in the big room outside.