Over the Fireside

e minimum of staff and outside expenses, it is achieving the maximum amount of good. As a library, I have only to tell you that it contains 6,600 separate works in 56,000 volumes, supplemented by 4,000 pieces of music in 8,000 volumes--a total of 64,000 items, which number is being added to every week as books are asked for by the various blind readers. And in helping this great and good work, I realise now that, to a certain extent, you are helping blind people to see. For books do take you out of yourself, don't they? They do help you to lose cognizance of your present surroundings, even if you be surrounded perpetually by darkness, they do transplant you for a while into another world--a world which you can see, and among men and women whom, should the author be great enough, you seem to know as well. Books are a blessing to all of us--but they are something more than a blessing to the blind, they are a deliverance from their darkness. And we can all give them this blessing, if we will--t