It is difficult now to grasp just how isolated blind people were at the turn of the century, when there was no radio. So vital a source of information was the new Ziegler Magazine that blind readers would "haunt" post offices throughout the country on the day set for the appearance of a new number of the Ziegler.

One reader wrote to Mrs. Ziegler, "When I came back from my state school for the blind to my little home in this little village, I realized that my family did no reading, and I gradually drifted into a distressing state, and I rarely went out in my little community feeling that I knew nothing of what was going on in the world and I was ashamed to let my neighbors see how little I did know. Later your magazine came and kept me informed on the things that were going on in the world. I then began to go out among our neighbors, and I soon felt that I could hold my own among them, and it will interest you to know that I soon joined a literary society, and when my turn comes to conduct the meeting I feel no hesitation to do so, feeling that I am now capable of doing so, and all this has come through your magazine."

On the magazine's 25th anniversary in 1932, another reader recalled her reactions to the magazine. When the first number of the big magazine came to me in March 1907 I had been out of school for three years and had little or nothing to read, so that Magazine...opened a new school and a new world of sunshine for me. ...I feel that this magazine has ben a ladder of success for many of us and that its contents are lifting us higher each month. May its pages continue to lift us higher and higher until we are more nearly on a level with the sighted world.

"No other work on the North American continent has done half so much for the blind. It has each month sent millions of little dots of joy streaming across the great expanse of our republic, bringing joy and happiness to dark eyes and longing finger tips."

A humorous recollection came from another reader on the magazine's 50th anniversary. "I'm not sure that I ever read the actual first...copy. But I made the magazine's acquaintance early in its existence—and mine—and it was a big event in my life."

In those days I was...struggling to make my way in the world of reading, and the magazine, intended for adults, served as a stone on which I unconsciously whetted my vocabulary as well as my ideas.

For instance, the word `current' in `Current Events' stumped me for a long time. I knew of a fruit by that name, but both the spelling and context told me that the two didn't fit. So then I thought that maybe the people who put the magazine together were making a mistake, intending to write "Certain Events," but when it went on month after month, that didn't seem reasonable either. And before I got this problem figured out, I ran into references to woman suffrage. Naturally, I thought that this must have something to do with childbirth. But then, why was Mrs. Pankhurst, in England, getting herself and her friends arrested? I was sure my mother could tell me, but I was too embarrassed to ask.

On the occasion of the magazine's fifth anniversary, in 1912, 5,000 readers contributed 10 cents each to present Mrs. Ziegler with a bronze statue of the Three Graces, a reproduction of a museum piece by the 18th century French sculptor Germain Pilon. The triangular marble base on which the sculpture is mounted was inscribed, on one side: "To Mrs. William Ziegler, March 1, 1912," and on the second side: "From Five Thousand Grateful Readers of the Ziegler Magazine on Its Fifth Anniversary." The inscription on the third side read, "The greatest of these is love—a love that uplifts." Along with the statue went a casket containing a leather-bound book on whose parchment leaves the names of all 5,000 givers were inscribed in India ink. Among those making donations were readers from Canada, the British Isles, Germany, Mexico, Holland, Norway, France, Palestine, India, Sweden, West Indies, Australia, and South Africa. All of these readers must have taken the trouble to learn either American braille or New York Point, neither of which was used in their own countries.