Without  saying  more  to  you  in  the  way  of  advice,  I  wish  it
were  in  my  power  to  bring  anything  to  you  in  tlie  way  of
encouragement,  as  you  stand  this  afternoon  before  me.  and
before  this  great  audience,  which  has  been  gathered  in  pro-
found interest  and  sympathy  for  your  present  and  your  future.
I  am  sure  that  the  opportunities  and  privileges  which  you  have
enjoyed  in  the  Massachusetts  School  for  the  Blind  have  been
of  the  utmost  value  to  you ;  and  that  the  training  which  is
unseen  but  which  reaches  far  out  into  the  visible  world,  and
makes  itself  felt  in  all  your  communion  with  your  fellow-
beings,  has  had  the  first  place  in  the  education  which  is  now
brought,  not  to  a  close,  but  to  a  period  in  which  one  phase  of
it  is  over  and  another  phase  begins.  You  remember  those
lovely  lines  which  Mrs.  Wordsworth  wrote,  and  which  her
husband  put  into  one  of  his  poems,  where  she  speaks  of


**  That  inward  eye,
Which  is  the  bliss  of  solitude.
tt


128


It  is  the  bliss  of  society  also,  the  bliss  of  life,  and  with  it
yoQ  see,  we  all  see,  into  the  great  realities  of  spiritual  exist-
ence. There  is  a  place  waiting  for  you,  for  each  one  of  you,
mong  your  fellow-men  and  fellow-women  ;  and  you  are  needed
by  them  just  as  much,  and  in  the  same  proportion,  as  they  are
needed  by  you.  As  you  take  the  place  which  God  has  pre-
pared for  you,  and  which  this  school  has  enabled  you  to  fill,
you  will  find,  day  by  day,  that  there  are  duties  and  responsi-
bilities which  no  other  man  and  no  other  woman  can  fulfil  but
just  yourselves.
