Eyewitness 1843: Blind students cross the 'Pons Asinorum'
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Lack of European pedigree appeared to have hurt attendance at a series of concerts given by young blind performers in Pittsburgh and Allegheny City in late summer 1843.
Residents of both communities were missing out on a good thing, according to an anonymous reviewer in a story that appeared on Sept. 1 in The Morning Chronicle, a competitor to the older Pittsburgh Gazette.
"The concert was but meagerly attended," according to the newspaper. "Such however is usual with Pittsburghers, when any thing of the kind, American or homebred in its nature, is concerned."
"Had it been published abroad that a musical company, that had exhibited and 'met with unbounded applause before the principal cities of Europe,' had visited our city, the house would have been crowded," the writer complained.
The troupe was from the Pennsylvania Institute, or Institution, for the Instruction of the Blind. Founded in 1832 in Philadelphia, it continues to operate today as the Overbrook School for the Blind.
Its founder, Julius Friedlander, developed a system of embossed all-capital letters, known as Philadelphia Line, that allowed blind people to read by feeling the letters with their hands. It was a competing system to the raised dots used in braille.
Students from the institute demonstrated Friedlander's system during their appearances in Pittsburgh.
"A very pretty Chinese girl," was one of the readers. She was "not more than nine years of age, and so small, her tiny arms could scarcely, even on tip-toe, reach over the table that held the book." Feeling "the characters stamped upon its page, [she] read passages from the chapters of Holy Writ." Her voice "breathed the richest music, and ... might have put many a seeing one, even older than herself to the blush."
First Published October 1, 2010 1:17 pm
