and Tom Jones, and Becky Sharpe, and all the myriad of interesting characters with which literature is filled. Life must be pretty dull to those whose acquaintance is limited to real people only.
One of the most placid and contented persons I have ever known was an old lady who was totally blind and who was forced for several years to lie in bed a good deal of the time alone. I used to drop in upon her frequently and usually quite unexpectedly. The great surprise to me was that I never found her depressed or with time hanging heavy on her hands. She was uniformally cheerful and happy and with a mind that seemed constantly occupied with something that was interesting and pleasing.
"What do you doto occupy your time and your thoughts when you are so much alone," I asked her once, "especially when you can not see?"
"I visit with my old friends," she said.
Then she went on to tell me that all through early and middle life, although she had had little opportunity for education in the schools, she had been a constant reader. I was amazed to discover how much she had read and how well she remembered it. Now that she was old and blind she went over all these literary experiences in her mind daily, and she got from the recollection infinite pleasure and recreation. Just the day I had been talking to her, she told me, she had been recalling the incidents in Scott's Heart of Midlothian
