A little handful of people once attended a prayer meeting at a little country church back among the hills. It was during a severe, gloomy Winter, a season of unusual trouble and unusual complaint. The little stove could barely melt the thick frost on the windows. The feeble lamps gave but a dim light. Yet as the meeting progressed through prayer and song that melancholy group of farmers mellowed, and undoubtedly something of holy joy came to them. I, of course, heard not a word of the service, but apparently each person waited for the spirit to move them, then rose and repeated some well-worn prayer or a verse of Scripture. It was utterly crude and simple, but a certain power fell upon that company and for the moment it was lifted out of the dull commonplace of daily life. Little or nothing of the spiritual uplift came to me. At the close of the service I saw people who had come gloomy and depressed acting like happy children, shaking hands, forgetting old troubles, buoyed and braced. And some of them seemed to regard my calmness with wonder—I could not fully join in their happiness. It is evident that a sincere religious spirit can bring great comfort to the deaf. Now and then I find a deaf man who practices what I call professional religion with all the cant and the pious phrases necessary. It never seems to ring true. The deaf are notorious failures at deception. But a firm trust in God and a sincere belief in His power and mercy should be “As the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land”—of silence. We must have the best possible moral support. I know of a man who is both blind and deaf. Once when I gave way momentarily to depression his wife wrote me: “I felt like writing an invitation to you to come and look at my husband who is both blind and deaf. An accident twenty-one years ago caused the loss of sight, which came on gradually but finally became complete. When I told him you were to write “Adventures in Silence,” he said, ‘Why not the wonders of silence and darkness?’ That has been his attitude all through these burdened years. These are but a small portion of the misfortunes and trials which have befallen us, but as he guides himself by lines hung from one point to another just high enough to take the crook of his cane there comes never a word of discouragement or despair. Here let me say that an educated, trained mind is the finest gift you can give to your children. It is the possession of a wonderful mind well trained by a splendid education that has been next to God’s love that has kept ‘my man’ upright and strong through the darkened and silent valley.” We may all of us readily understand that no human or material power is strong enough to sustain a man through such a fate. CHAPTER XVI “SUCH TRICKS HATH STRONG IMAGINATION”