Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches

[227] assisted in Howe's convalescence, and he said afterwards that if he had not been strongly opposed to matrimony at that time she would probably have become his wife. He was not married until ten years later; but he always remembered this incident as one of the pleasantest in his life.

The true hero never rests on his laurels. Doctor Howe had no sooner returned from Europe than he set himself to work on a design he had conceived in Paris for the instruction of the blind. Next to Doctor Morton's discovery of etherization, there has been no undertaking equal to this for the amelioration of human misery. He brought the best methods from Europe, and improved upon them. Beginning at first in a small way, and with such means as he could obtain from the merchants of Boston, he went on to great achievements. He had the most difficulty in dealing with legislative appropriations and enactments, for as he was not acquainted with the ruling class in Massachusetts, they consequently looked upon him with suspicion. He not only made the plan, but he carried it out; he organized the institution at South Boston and set the machinery in motion.

The story of Laura Bridgman is a tale told in many languages. The deaf and blind girl whom Doctor Howe taught to read and to think soon