Take a man with dull hearing, little or no education, no surplus capital—nothing except health and a dim idea that “education” will prove the tool to crack the safe wherein is locked opportunity—and what college will take and train him? I am sure that the colleges to which my boys have gone would never have given me a chance. But one fine day in September found me entering the gate of the Michigan Agricultural College. I do not think I ever passed the examination—I think the instructors felt somewhat as the Indians do about the deaf. At any rate, I entered, not knowing what I wanted or what I was fitted for. It might be interesting to see what sort of an education may be picked up in this go-as-you-please manner, or what is required to fit a man for a happy life in the silent world. However needful it may be for a deaf man to acquire excellence in some definite work, it is most of all important that he soak in all possible poetry, human sunshine and inspiration against the time that he must enter prison. CHAPTER V “A HEART FOR ANY FATE” Early Adventures—From Boston to the West—The Milkman and the Ear Trumpet—The “Milk Cure”—The Office of the Apple—Cases of Mistaken Identity—The Prohibitionist and the Missing Uncle George. Until I went to Colorado as a young man to work on a dairy ranch, I did not fully realize the possibilities of deafness. I made a long jump to the Rocky Mountains. In those days it was something of a leap in longitude, culture and occupation. I had been working in a publishing house, and for several years part of my job had consisted in running errands for a group of the most distinguished authors ever brought together in America. Of course, no gentleman can be a hero to his valet, but a great author can be more than a hero to his errand boy. I went out once and bought a bag of peanuts for this merry group of serious-minded men; I suppose I am the only living person who ever ate peanuts with Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Holmes, Whittier and Aldrich. I saw Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes put a peanut shell on his thumb and shoot it across the room at John G. Saxe, as a boy would shoot a marble. To me the most impressive of all that group of supermen was John Greenleaf Whittier. He was quite deaf, and the affliction troubled him greatly. Some of the critics think that his inability to hear accurately accounts for some of his slips of rhyme. To me the remarkable thing is that in all Whittier’s writings I can find only one indirect reference to his severe affliction. This is in the poem entitled “My Birthday”: Better than self-indulgent years The outflung heart of youth, Than pleasant songs in idle years The tumult of the truth. * * * * * * * And if the eye must fail of light, The ear forget to hear, Make clearer still the Spirit’s sight, More fine the inward ear!