Your reformer broods over his mission until it becomes a part of his life, a habit which he cannot break. He reaches a position where he cannot compromise, sidestep or wait patiently. He goes ahead and never waits for “interludes,” which most of us must put in between efforts at “reform.” The rest of the world cannot follow him. He becomes a “crank,” a “nut,” or an “old stick,” because he cannot stop with the crowd and play with the theory of reform, but must push on with all his soul. It seems to us who look out upon the aimless procession moving before us that an average man feels that he cannot “succeed” unless he stops at command and plays the petty games of society; he has sold himself into the slavery of habit and fashion, though he knows how poor and trivial they may be. This is bad enough, but it is worse to see scores of people fastening the handcuffs on their children. Now and then the organist has visions which show her what to do, and she swings the great congregation to the deaf man’s lead. Unhappily there are few such organists. It is strange, indeed, when you come to consider it, that two worlds, separated only by sound, lie side by side and yet so far apart. You cannot understand our life, and perhaps at times you shudder at the thought of how narrow our lives have been made. We who have known sound and lost it have learned to find substitutes, and we often wonder that you narrow your own lives by making such trivial and ignoble use of sound as we see you doing. Fate has narrowed our lives, and we have been forced to broaden them by seeking the larger thoughts. You, it often seems to us, straiten your own lives by dwelling with the smaller things of existence. The deaf have one advantage at least. They have explored the pleasant roads and the dark alleys of both worlds. If they are of true heart, in doing so they have gained at least a glimpse of that other dim, mysterious country which lies hidden beyond us all. To the blind, the deaf, or to those who carry bravely the cross of some deep trouble, there will surely come vision and promise which never appear to those who are denied the privilege of passing through life under the shadow of a great affliction. But these visions do not come to those who pass on with downcast eyes, permitting their affliction to bear them down. They are reserved for those who defy fate and march through the dark places with smiling faces and uplifted eyes. Someone has said that the deaf man is half dead, because he is unable to separate in his life the living memory or sound from the deadness of the silence. “I must walk softly all my days in the bitterness of my soul.” That was the old prophet’s dismal view of life, and how often have I heard hopeless sufferers, half insane with the jangle of head noises, quote that passage.