Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/563

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HOW THE BLIND ARE EDUCATED.
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Norway. His tricycle was probably among the first seen by the Norwegian peasant, and he relates how one man with a pony-car on a country road followed them for hours, and when they put up at an inn and wanted water, how he ran off to get some from the mountain spring as joyously as though the tricyclists had been creatures of a celestial world, and how, when they were having their feed at the inn, this rapt admirer rang the bell of the machine, to the delight of a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers.


The rocking-boat.
Other forms of outdoor amusement and recreation to be seen at the College are swinging, running, skittles, and the rocking-boat. Ingenuity is the characteristic of everything we examine. How, for instance, can the blind play skittles, you may well ask? Thus: The men are placed at the end of a long platform, and are prevented from rolling away by a cord which passes through a hole in the board and holds them where they fall. The ball having rolled to the end of the platform, drops over on to a slope, and returns to the players. So having made a shot, they can find out how many men have been bowled over, and there is never any risk of losing the ball. Whilst several boys amuse themselves in this way, a dozen girls get into the rocking-boat close by, and as they swing themselves backwards and forwards sing softly and melodiously to the roll of the boat.

Even now we have not exhausted he possibilities of enjoyment which the grounds afford the pupils of the College. During the summer time many of the girls have their little plot of flower garden. They take the greatest interest in the cultivation of plants which they cannot see, and to place in their bosoms a flower which they have grown themselves, is one of the delights of their lives.


The kindergarten.

So much for what Dr. Campbell properly regards as the generation of the motive