As If a Fog Had Rolled Away

I was born in a fine old county of one of the Southern States. My father was a German, and came to this country when a young man. He was a steady, industrious, frugal man. He worked on one of the first railroads built in the South for more than a dozen years, then bought a farm and moved to it when I was about five years old, and it was on this farm that my childhood was spent.

There were eight children of us, three sons and five daughters. My mother had two brothers who were afflicted with cataract, and this same infirmity showed itself in our family in one of those strange freaks of heredity. In my younger brother and myself it was congenital, and my case was the worst of the three.

One of my earliest and most vivid recollections is the first of four operations on my eyes. It was before I was five years old — and long before the days of local anesthesias. I was placed full length on a bench, tied hand and foot, my head was grasped firmly, and my eyes were held open while the doctor inserted a sharp needle and attempted to cut up the cataract.

It was a day in May. The doctor inserted his needle in the right eye, and a moment later he had pressed the cataract from over the sight. And then, as if a dense fog had suddenly rolled away, there burst upon my view such a vision of field and sky and sunlight as I had never looked upon before. That was over forty years ago, but that day in May marked an epoch in my life.