Bells at Evening, and Other Verses

Frances Jane Crosby, the daughter of John and Mercy Crosby, was born in South East, Putnam County, New York, March 24, 1820. Her home was in a little valley, through which ran a branch of the Croton River. The murmur of the flowing water was the music of her earliest childhood. Her fancy reveled in the silvery tones that rose incessantly from the humble brook. They spoke to her in a language which she could understand, and she learned to translate them into her own vernacular. The dancing measures of the little stream still linger sweetly in her memory.

When she was only six weeks old an affection of the eyes demanded medical treatment. Either from lack of accurate diagnosis, or from the operation of causes beyond the reach of ordinary skill, the remedies applied failed to accomplish the desired end, and her sense of sight entirely disappeared. Happily for her peace of mind, this loss of vision came upon her at so early an age that she was relieved of those violent and painful contrasts which would have been her lot if this misfortune had overtaken her in later years. Indeed so utterly foreign to her is our world of sight, she does not feel the loss of what practically never was in her possession. A calamity which would be regarded by us as beyond all compensation she looks upon as one of the commonplaces of her normal condition. It is pathetic to hear her gentle but earnest protest when tender sympathies are expended upon her by honestly commiserating friends; but we cannot but admire the beautiful contentment with which she accepts her place in life, and even expresses a preference for what to us would be only an unmitigated misfortune. Her childhood was a period of unalloyed delight. Her happy temperament threw sunshine over all her surroundings. She discovered in time that there was a sight-world in which she had no part, but no knowledge of that deprivation could affect the elasticity of her spirits. As if to give notice to all persons that they need not waste any condolements on her, she wrote, at the age of eight years, the following statement of the situation as she viewed it:

“O what a happy soul am I!

Although I cannot see,
I am resolved that in this world

Contented I will be;
How many blessings I enjoy

That other people don’t! To weep and sigh because I’m blind,

I cannot, and I won’t.”

The poetry in this childish effusion may not be of the highest order, but the philosophy it contains is worthy of general adoption.

When she was about nine years old she was taken by her parents to Ridgefield, Conn., where the family remained four years. After the death of her father her opportunities for mental improvement were in a degree interrupted. This would have been a serious thing to her but for the one happy event which turned and fixed the course of her life. At the age of fifteen years she entered the New York Institution for the Blind. Here she remained as a pupil for twelve years. In 1847 she became a teacher, in which position she continued till 1858. She taught English Grammar, Rhetoric, and Roman and American History. This was the developing period in her life. The darkness that was upon the face of the deep gave place to the form and symmetry of intellectual expansion. Her vivid imagination, which had been running for years with but little restraint, came under the control of her broadening intellect. Language, which, under the circumstances of her life, had been necessarily limited, came to her aid with a steadily increasing vocabulary. The poetic faculty, which from early childhood had been struggling within her for expression, found food and stimulus along all these lines of intellectual development. Memory, always intensified and strengthened in the absence of external helps, became her ready and obedient servitor. The schoolboy may forget the lesson on the printed page, but the blind man retains it. The man with clear vision may lose the face of a friend in the distractions of the outside world, but the blind man never mistakes the tone of a voice. The expert organist, with his fingers on the key-board or his pen marking the paper, may be puzzled to know the correct outlet for a discord, but the blind musician, almost by intuition, will see the difficulty and give the true progression. The Bible, studded with golden texts, became a never-failing treasury to this blind girl passing up into womanhood. So tenacious is her memory that in her early years she committed the first four books of the Old Testament, anc also the four Gospels. Her hymns abound with phrases of Scripture which readily adapt themselves to rhythmic expression. Her mind is stored with much that she has learned from various authors. Once in possession of a thought of value, she assimilates it, reproduces it, makes it her own by putting on it the stamp of her individuality. The versatility of her genius is remarkable. Driven sometimes by a stress of work there will slip from her a striking epithet or phrase which she has used before; but, taking into view the many hymns which she has written, besides songs and miscellaneous poems, the wonder is that she expresses herself in such manifold variety. Her mind is a storehouse of things new and old, and her verse is constructed from the abundant words and phrases which seem to fall almost of their own accord into their appropriate places.

During her pupilage in the Institution for the Blind her teachers did not fail to notice the poetic quality of her mind, and the growing aptitude for putting words together in metrical form and tapering them off with rhymes. So prominently did this gift assert itself, the managers were led to utilize it for the benefit of the Institution. In August, 1842, a tour was made through western New York, in which a number of the pupils made exhibition of the kind of work done in the schoolroom. At all these meetings Miss Crosby was put forward as conspicuously illustrating the value of education to the blind. A poetic address delivered at one of these meetings contains the following stanza:

“Contented, happy, though a sightless band, Dear friends, this evening we before you stand; We for a moment your attention claim. And trust that boon will not be asked in vain.”

In May, 1843, the Institution for the Blind held its anniversary in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York. The occasion, always interesting, was made doubly so by the recitation of an original poem, of which the following is an extract:

11 The smile that decks the human face,

The brilliant eye, the joyous brow, Are beauties we may never trace;

A rayless midnight shrouds us now. But why, O why the falling tear?

Why heaves the sad, unbidden sigh? The lamp of knowledge, bright and clear,

Pours luster on our mental eye.”

On June 22, 1843, the Senate of the State of New York visited the Institution in a body. Here again our blind girl was brought to the front, and addressed the high dignitaries in a poem, of which the following is a specimen:

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