But I have lived to learn a strange thing. The silent world is peopled with the ghosts and shadows of men and women who have lived in other ages. Somehow they seem to feel that they would like to relive their lives, and repeat their message to humanity; but only the blind, the deaf and those otherwise afflicted seem to be able to meet them fully. The great undying souls who have made or modified history and human thought live in books, pictures and memories, but only in the world of silence can they give full comfort and power. For we come to know them so intimately that we learn how each one of them went about his great work carrying a cross of some kind—and the bond of sympathy to the afflicted grows stronger. You with light physical crosses perhaps think that you take full inspiration from Milton. Have you ever thought how much clearer his message can be to the blind or the deaf? Here, then, is our help and our hope. Our ears are not dull to the reverberating echoes of the past, and we can reach back for the best worldly solace—the experience and advice of those who have fought the good fight, and won. It would be nonsense for anyone to claim that he goes through this preparatory course in philosophy with patience or good temper. He misses too much. The future is too uncertain. The dread of losing the rest of his hearing and the thought of the blight which this would mean to his future will at times drive the deaf man to desperation. At times he is almost willing to take the advice of Job’s wife— “_Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God and die!_” And some of us never gain the faith and philosophy which make life in the silence endurable. Others acquire them slowly by a burning process which scars, but in the end gives them new strength. I remember two incidents which influenced me during the first days of my realization of what was ahead. They are of distinctly opposite character. One day the regular herder was sick and I took his place. He was a “lunger,” a victim of tuberculosis, who had waited too long before coming to Colorado. At one time I worked with three of these men, and I came to know how their disease could send them to the top round of ecstasy and to the lowest level of depression in a single day. I have seen them get up in the morning dancing at the very joy of life, planning their “going home” to surprise the old folks with their cure. Yet by night perhaps they put a handkerchief to the mouth and took it away stained with blood—and their spirits would fall to earth abruptly. They are even more distressing companions than inhabitants of the silence who feel that they have lost life, fortune and future with the closing of their ears.