SAMUEL GRIDLEY HOWE

The story of Laura E. Richard's father's life (1801-1875) is told with directness, simplicity, and considerable emotion, interspersed with the necessary facts and frequent quotations from correspondence. His interests were many, his vitality great, his enthusiasm for lost causes a byword. But his outstanding contribution and his life work was the establishment for schools for the blind, his development of methods of teaching them, and his parallel work for the insane. It was an uphill struggle, a problem of raising funds, creating interest, educating an apathetic public. The biography is important because of the characterization of a deftly pictured here who comes to life in its pages. The wide interest in work among the blind should create a definite market, plus the appeal on the basis of sound American biography.