I was now taken to St. George's Hospital, and from there to No. 2 London
General Hospital (old St. Mark's College), Chelsea. In this institution
I met for the first time one of the geniuses of the present age, a man
who spent his life working not with clay or marble, or wood or metal,
but with human beings, taking the derelicts of life and moulding them
into useful vessels--Sir Arthur Pearson, a true miracle worker, a man
who has given the equivalent of eyes to hundreds of blind people, who
has enabled many men who felt themselves down and out to face life's
battle bravely, teaching them to look upon their affliction as nothing
more than a petty handicap. A few years ago, as everyone knows, Sir
Arthur was one of the leading journalists and publishers in the British
Empire, the true founder of Imperial journalism. At the summit of his
career, while still a comparatively young man, he was smitten with
blindness. He would not let a thing like that beat him; he conquered
blindness, and set himself to help others to conquer it. He soon became
the leading spirit in the education of the blind in Great Britain, and,
despite his handicap, was elected President of the National Institute
for the Blind, and was the guiding star in many organizations
established to aid the sightless. When war broke out his success as an
organizer, his power as a teacher, caused the authorities to choose him
to look after the blinded of the Army and Navy.