The entire company heard him, and the wife and daughter were deeply mortified. They did manage to cut off the rest of his remarks, and finally, exceedingly conscious that he had made a bad blunder, the deaf man retreated to the porch to look at the stars. They are old friends who never find fault when one stumbles over some woman-made rule of society. And there came the lion, broken away temporarily from his keepers, fumigating with a cigar some of the thoughts which his admirers had aroused. He went straight to the deaf man and held out his hand. “My friend, you are the only honest man in this house. The _rest_ of us are tired, but we lack the courage to admit it in public. How do you come to be so brave?” Another deaf man went back to his old town after fifteen years’ absence. They were about to hold a political convention to nominate a candidate for Congress. The Hon. Robert Grey controlled most of the delegates. No one in particular was enthusiastic about the Hon. Robert excepting himself and his close friends, yet no one could quite summon the courage to tell the truth about him. The deaf man arrived, and saw a large, black-haired man dominating the stage. “Why,” he said, in what he intended to be a subdued tone, “there is Bob Gray. He’s the man who stole the town funds while he was treasurer. What’s he doing here? He should be in jail!” He had not gauged his voice correctly, and half the people in the hall heard him. It was just what the rest had lacked the courage to say. The deaf man, with his simplicity and directness, had penetrated into the hiding place of the big issue of the campaign. His remark changed the entire spirit of the convention, and the Hon. Robert Grey was left at home. The deaf man is often laughed at for his blunders, but, unwittingly, he has pricked many a bubble and exposed many a fraud through his blunderings. Take the case of the young man who fancied the minister’s daughter and went to church with her. The congregation was small, and the collections were generally in line with the congregation. The collector was a deaf man, a faithful attendant, who, as he said, could not even hear the money drop into the box. Our young man took a five-dollar gold piece out of his pocket and held it up so that the minister’s daughter could see it and observe his great liberality. She protested in a whisper: “Oh, that’s too much! I wouldn’t give that amount.” “Oh, that’s nothing. My usual habit is to give ten dollars, but I don’t happen to have such a coin with me today.”