‘I have been learning a new art, and am thankful to find that I have sufficient energy left in me to do so. I sent for some reading in embossed letters for a blind man here, and amused myself by puzzling it out myself. I have succeeded in reading right through the fourteenth of St. John in two sittings of about an hour and twenty minutes each. It was an effort of memory as well as attention, as some of the letters are utterly unlike those to which we have been accustomed. The poor blind man promises well to acquire the art, I think.’