Sometimes the deaf go fishing for compliments themselves, with very disastrous results. We may wisely conclude that few bouquets will be thrown in our direction. Even those which reach us may contain some kind of hook concealed amid the flowers. Yet there was Henry Bascom, very deaf, very vain, and filled with the almost criminal idea that he could write poetry. He refused to work at his trade, for he felt that his muse did not care to brush her skirts against overalls or working clothes. His brother-in-law, a blunt, outspoken man, was growing weary of “feeding lazy poets.” Once he roared out a protest, but Henry did not get it straight, and hoped it was some sort of compliment. So he insisted that his sister repeat it. But she hesitated. Finally she temporized: “George merely said something about the great need of energy in the world.” Of course, Henry should have known that there was explosive material hidden in all this, but he only decided that something fine was being kept away from him. So when George came home he began again: “George, I was much interested in what you said this morning. Won’t you repeat it so that I can have it exact?” And George very willingly complied. He wrote the message carefully in ink: “_I told Mary that if you belonged to me I would make you work even if you bust a gut!_” Investigation will destroy illusion nine times out of ten. If you think your friends are saying nice things about you, let it go at that. Take my advice and let analysis of such doubtful remarks alone. Eight times out of ten, for the deaf, it will lead to an explosion. And there was the deaf man who went to the reception with his wife and daughter. Some remarkable literary lion had come to town, and the elite had turned out to see him feed and hear him roar, if he could be induced to perform. The deaf man, at his distance, watched the lion carefully and felt that here was a kindred spirit. For back of the stereotyped smile and the smug mask of conventionality there was another person, a real human being, who had grown weary of the foolishness, and was eager to get back into the wilderness, where outsiders, like the deaf and the uncelebrated, may have their fling. But the women continued to parade themselves and their ideas before the celebrity with an ostentation that was quite enough to rouse the ire of a sensible dweller in the silence. This man held in as long as he could, and then remarked to his wife in what he thought was a whisper: “Those silly girls make me very tired.”