And yet you never can tell how people will size you up. There was a deaf man who became greatly interested in prohibition. He could not even drink coffee as a stimulant. He was to be chairman of the State prohibition convention, and so started on a night train for the meeting. Just before retiring he read over his speech, and then crawled into his berth very well satisfied with himself. About midnight he was awakened by a heavy hand on his shoulder. You must remember that it is a great shock for the deaf to be rudely started from sleep in this way; it is then impossible for them to grasp any new situation quickly. In the dim light of the Pullman our deaf man saw the figure of a man who was fumbling about in his suitcase. When he saw that he had awakened the sleeper, this intruder left the case, opened the curtains and held out his hand with some object presented straight at the deaf man’s head. As he was evidently asking some question, the deaf man imagined that he was a train robber presenting a pistol with a “Hands up,” “Money or your life,” or some such appropriate remark. The prohibition orator thrust up his hands and said: “I’m deaf. Take it all!” The “train robber” talked for a while and then lowered his hand, took the deaf man by the arm and led him to the smoking-room. There the “robber” turned out to be the colored porter, with no pistol, but a glass bottle in his hand. Finally, he slowly and laboriously wrote out the following: “_Man in lower four sick. Has got to have brandy. Says you look like a sport and probably have it on you. Can you fill this bottle?_” They had taken our prohibition friend for the other sort of a “rum-punisher.” Such cases of mistaken identity are quite common to the deaf, and some of them are never fully untangled. Once when I entered a crowded dining-room in New York City a young woman jumped up from a table and greeted me with every evidence of affection. I had never seen her before, and was greatly embarrassed, especially as I could not hear a word she said. I tried to explain, but she continued talking rapidly, holding me by the arm. Of all the people present, no one thought of coming to my aid except the colored waiter. He was the good Samaritan who talked to the lady and wrote out her story for me on the back of his order card. She thought I was her Uncle George, who had agreed to meet her there. She insisted that I was playing a practical joke in pretending that I was only a plain and somewhat bewildered deaf man. Finally she obtained a side view of my face which convinced her of her mistake, and then, greatly startled by the publicity she had caused, she hurried away. To this day I do not know who “Uncle George” was or if he ever found his niece. My colored interpreter, however, is still on duty, and frequently writes out for me the conversations of people near by. CHAPTER VI MEMORIES OF EARLY LIFE