As his affliction progresses, the deaf man learns frankly to admit his inability to hear. This turns out to be a remarkably effective way to separate the sheep from the goats, for most people will never go to the trouble of making us understand unless they have some really important message to deliver. Whenever we owe money, we find that our creditors are quite able to communicate with us; would that our debtors were equally insistent! Now and then comes a man who feels the tremendous importance of his message, although no one else recognizes it. He looks upon the deaf man as his select audience, and after giving us an agonizing half-hour, he goes on his way, pluming himself on the kindly deed he has performed in helping the neglected deaf man to valuable information! I once lived in a little Southern town where the man who kept the livery stable was quite deaf. He was popularly known as a “near” man, “so close you could see him.” “The only thing he could hear was the clink of money in his pocket.” The men who worked for him often had trouble getting their money. One day his stableman, Ben Adams, colored, approached the boss and screamed in his ear: “Mr. Brown, can I have fifty cents?” Brown heard him perfectly, but no one ever extracted fifty cents from him without working for it. So he put on a fierce look and roared: “_What?_ What did you say?” Exceeding penury had made Ben Adams bold. Here was a chance to raise his demand, and the delay bolstered his courage. So he made a trumpet of his hands and roared again: “Massa Brown, can I have _a dollar_?” Brown donned that fierce scowl which the deaf know so well how to assume, and roared himself: “I thought you said fifty cents!” The only safety for the very deaf man is to have the message written out. Lip-reading and the use of superior instruments are frequently very helpful, but my own experience is that it is a mistake to accept anything but written evidence. I take it that sound conversation is uncertain at best, and when a message is passed along through several persons, all more or less careless in speaking or listening, it is sure to be twisted out of its original shape. In our Southern printing office there was a stock anecdote about the Indian who mixed up his message. This Indian was printer’s devil in a small newspaper office in Mississippi. He was said to be a star performer whenever he was supported by firewater. In those days local printers made their own ink rollers out of glue and molasses. During the Civil War the old roller wore out, and it became necessary to send the Indian to Vicksburg for the material for a new one. The printers did not dare write out the order, for if papers were found on the Indian he would be hung for a spy. So they coached him carefully and told him to go on saying over and over to himself: “Something sticky and something sweet.”