even so much as a thousandth part of it.
Having left a Blind Institution, the mat-maker
or net-maker looks to the few friends
he has, and they are active in endeavouring
to procure him custom. Therefore he
commonly begins by earning for himself a loaf
or two of bread. But, in a little while, custom
begins to lessen the activity of sympathy.
The worker is left to his own efforts and
resources, and he is in no position to be on
the watch for the support of his own interests.
He cannot jostle his sharp-eyed
competitors in the great labour market, and he
is soon pushed aside out of the crowd. He
falls into want. He pledges or sells his tools.
He comes to the workhouse, or makes,
perhaps, some effort to live by playing an
accordion in the streets. The next step downward
is to simple beggary.

Against tbese difficulties Miss Gilbert, the
benevolent foundress of the Institution in the
Euston Road, especially desires to show how
we may prudently contend. The entire
control of her Institution is made over to a
committee of influential and able men; and that
there may be nothing to contract its sphere
of usefulness, it is, by its formal title, said
simply to be an Association for Promoting
the General Welfare of the Blind. No money
is spent upon display. The blind lady who
began this good work made her experiment
for more than a year quietly and alone. She
began her work in May of the year eighteen
hundred and fifty-four, and it was not until
July in the year following that an appeal was
made to the public for subscriptions with a
view to the extension of its plan.
Subscribers and friends of the enterprise met
eighteen months afterwards to develope the
small private association into the beginning
of what is, we trust, hereafter to become a
great public foundation, and decide upon its
rules. The society has subsequently been
supported by subscriptions and donations,
certain contributions towards an endowment
fund having been added to Miss Gilbert's
own gift of two thousand pounds for the same
purpose.

While there is no limit in extent or direction
to the desire of this body, which is at
present but a small one, to be helpful to the
blind, there is a sound discretion exercised
in the development of its resources. Its main
effort is to be serviceable as a supplement to
the established blind schools. It looks for
the blind labourer in the day of distress, and
teaches him a trade if he has learnt none, or
if the trade learnt already chances to be one
by which life cannot be supported; it makes
also a just and kindly distribution of the
work it can provide. How much or how
little that may be, depends upon the number
of the customers for mats, baskets, and
brushes at the little shop to which we have
already referred.

The shop is the point of contact between
customers and the poor blind workman or
workwoman. It is not intended to be, and
it cannot be, entirely self-supporting. All
articles sold in it are sold to private
customers at the usual retail prices, and by
wholesale with a liberal reduction to the
trade; but the resulting profits are paid to
the blind manufacturers without any
deduction for the shopkeeper's profit, or even for
the covering of shop expenses. Some of the
necessary compensation is allowed in this
way for the disadvantage blind workmen
are under because of the necessary slowness
of their labour. There is need, therefore,
of endowment or subscription to maintain
the little house which has been made,
among other of its good uses, to serve as
an exchange through which the blind man
who works at his lodging may come into
contact with the customer who buys in shops.
At present, the receipts at this establishment
are, we believe, thirteen or fourteen hundred
pounds a-year. Of this sum about half is
distributed as payment for labour only to
blind mat-makers, and so forth, working at
their homes. Of each sovereign paid for
mats under this system a sum of about nine
and fourpence goes to the blind workman
for his labour, while to the basket-maker the
proportion paid is about thirteen and
fourpence in the sovereign.

An important part of the work of the
Association consists in the teaching of trades
to adults who, until so taught, have not the
means of supporting themselves or their
families. One constant labour of the blind
superintendent, Mr. W. Hanks Levy, is also
the discovery and introduction of new forms
of industry by the adoption of which blind
people can live, since it is absolutely
necessary that there should be increase in the
number and, if possible, improvement also in
the character of their available resources.
Mr. Levy has already added seven new and
fairly profitable occupations to the number
of trades open to the blind. He has made
journeys into the provinces, and even one
journey to Paris, for the discovery of
improved methods of work in the old callings.
Among the results of his exploration he has
brought from France a plan of basket-making
upon blocks, which ensures to the
blind basket-maker great perfection in his
work with an important saving of time.

The little Euston Road Exchange is a
narrow shop, tapestried with cocoa-nut
mats, and festooned with brooms, baskets,
and basket-chairs. Brushes of all kinds
are in cases and drawers; ornamental bead-
work and leather-work is upon the counter;
ornaments and blacking-brushes play at
Beauty and the Beast together in the
window. Behind the counter Mrs. Levy
acts as shopwoman.

We ask for information, and are led by
Mrs. Levy to her husband through a little
room, with a long table in it, behind which
there stands a row of blind men quietly