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[Illustration: MARY L. DAY ARMS]
THE WORLD AS I HAVE FOUND IT.
SEQUEL TO
Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl.
BY MARY L. DAY ARMS.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
By Rev. Charles F. Deems, LL.D.
BALTIMORE:
PUBLISHED BY JAMES YOUNG,
112 West Baltimore Street.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by
MARY L. DAY ARMS,
In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
INTRODUCTION.
Mrs. Arms has asked me to write an introduction to her book. It hardly
seems to need it. The title-page shows that it was written by one who is
blind. It is a sequel to another volume. That volume has been widely sold,
and all who read it will, I am sure, have some desire to see how the
stream of the life of its writer has been flowing since her first book was
written. Her patient perseverance under privations has won her a large
circle of personal friends, who will take pleasure in procuring and
preserving this fresh memento of the Blind Girl.
Such a book as this has a value which, probably, has not occurred to its
author. She has put on record the phenomena of her life as she has
recollected them, with great simplicity, merely for the entertainment of
her readers, without attaching any importance to the value which every
such memoir has in the department of science. But it is just from the
study of such phenomena as these that the students in mental and moral
philosophy learn the laws of mind and the operations of a human soul under
a divine, moral government. As a matter of taste we might omit the
writer's description of her husband, whom she never yet has seen, p. 45,
and her account of her love affairs, p. 49; and if we had discretionary
editorship, and the volume had been written by one having always had her
sight, we should unhesitatingly exclude such passages. But, as the records
of the impressions, consciousnesses and general mental phenomena of a
blind girl _in love_, they stand to be, perhaps, quoted hereafter in some
abstruse scientific treatise, or bloom out in some perennial poem.
There is an immediate practical usefulness in such a book as this. It has
its wholesome lesson for the young. It shows what strength of character
and vigor of purpose will accomplish under even extraordinary
embarrassments. The young lady had a hard early life. She had neither
friends nor money nor sight, but she unwhiningly took up the task of
taking care of herself, and discharged it so nobly as to make for herself
a wide circle of friends, and keep for herself that sense of self-reliance
as toward man, and of faith as toward God, which are worth more than all
the dirty dollars that wickedness can give to weakness.
Let our young women who are in straitened circumstances, in circumstances
that seem absolutely exclusive of all hope of retaining virtue and keeping
life, read this book and its predecessor, and pluck up faith and hope. Let
all our young ladies, daughters of loving parents, daughters who have no
care for the morrow, daughters of delicious ease and happy opportunity,
read this book, and then let their consciences ask them how they are to
carry their idleness to be examined at the judgment sent of Christ, in
contrast with this blind girl's industry, fidelity and perseverance.
CHARLES F. DEEMS.
CHURCH OF THE STRANGERS,
New York, 4th July, 1878.
CHAPTER I.
"Warriors and statesmen have their meed of praise,
And what they do, or suffer, men record;
While the long sacrifice of woman's days
Passes without a thought, without a word:
And many a holy struggle for the sake
Of duty, _sternly_, _faithfully_ fulfil'd;
For which the anxious soul must watch and wait,
Goes by unheeded as the summer wind,
And leaves no _memory_, and no trace behind!
Yet, it may be, more lofty courage dwells
In one meek heart that braves an adverse fate,
Than his whose ardent soul indignant swells,
Warmed by the fight, or cheered through high debate.
The soldier dies surrounded; could he _live
Alone_ to suffer, and alone to strive?"
So was rendered the sad soul-music of one of the legion,
"Who learned in sorrow
What they taught in song."
and the weird words have been echoed by the voice of many a woman all
along, whose weary wanderings have burned the sacrificial fires; amid the
ashes of whose dead hopes the embers have flickered and faded only to
rekindle the lurid, lustrous light of added, and still added offerings.
There, waiting and watching the deep tracery "upon the sands beside the
sounding sea," find wave after wave wash away the mystic hand-writing.
The ebbing tide carries afar the ships freighted with aching, anguished
hearts; when borne upon the swell of the flowing sea, come the swift sails
of Argosies richly laden with hope, full with fruition.
Within the heart of all there lies deeply imbedded the "Black Drop" of
which the Mahometan legend tells, and which the angel revealed to the
Prophet of Allah. 'Tis in aching anguish this drop must be probed and
purified, to be healed only through the endless eloquence of duty done.
The sightless eyes have vivid visions. Theirs is the light in darkness
which stirred the soul of a Milton with a "gift divine;" inspired a Homer
with the "fire and frenzy" which crowned an Iliad and an Odyssey, the
master pieces of Epic verse; gave to the antique and traditional
literature of the Celtic race its meteoric brilliancy, and produced the
weird, wondrous sublimity of an Ossian.
All who have read the Invocation to Light by the blind authoress, Mrs. De
Kroyft, must have realized the luminous light of a soul sublimated by
sorrow and swelling and soaring in eloquent strains.
'Tis but a simple song I must sing, a bird-note amid cathedral tones; but
may not its minstrelsy meet the heart and search the soul of many a
sorrowing one, or rise like the song of the nightingale to the throne of
Him who sees the lives enthralled?
If this little lesson of life can find a single searcher for the truth it
tells, or bear on the breath of the breeze "one soft Æolian strain," may I
not hope that it may help to swell the harp-notes of the heavenly
harmonies?