HERITAGE
Illustration★★★★When three-year-old Louis Braille him as one of the greatest musicians, he was boring holes with an awl in a heavy died in poverty and was buried in a piece of leather in his father’s harness shop in Coupvray, France, back in 1812, pauper’s grave. an accident with the awl caused blind1272. A friend of Lord Byron, a cripple ness. Seventeen years later the totally from his youth, said of the poet: “He blind youth invented the Braille system, brooded over that blemish as sensitive a system now used all over the world, minds will brood until they magnify a bringing incalculable blessing to thouwart into a wen.
His lameness certainly sands of blind persons. Not only did the helped to make him skeptical, cynical, invention bring “sight” to young Braille, but his tragedy was the means of help- and savage.” ing many generations of blinded persons.
The point
Two stories showing how inherited handicaps and traits can become either sources of triumph or bitterness, using Braille and Byron as examples.