The woman I speak of knew by these tests that her hearing was failing. She was a student at college, where quick and sound ears are essential if one is to obtain full benefit from lectures. I know just what this means from my own experience, since I entered college some little time after my ears began to fail. I am frequently asked how it is possible for students with defective hearing to obtain an education. To the ambitious man or woman the first thought on discovering the beginnings of deafness is that the mind must be improved so as to make skilled labor possible. Too many deaf people after a brief struggle feel that fate has denied them the right to an education, and they give up trying in despair. I found several ways of partly overcoming the difficulty. I copied notes made by another student. In every class you will find several natural reporters who make a very clear synopsis of the lectures, and are rather proud of their skill. I found one lazy and brilliant fellow who was an excellent reporter, though he absolutely refused to study. He would give me his report and I would look up the authorities and help him fill in the skeleton. We served each other like the blind and the halt. I also made arrangements with several professors to read their lecture notes. Most of them are quite willing to permit this when they find the deaf man earnest and determined. In fact, the average professor comes to be a dry sawbones of a fact dispenser, whose daily struggle is to cram these facts into the more or less unwilling student brain. When an interested deaf man appears, actually eager to read the lectures, the soul of the driest professor will expand, for here, he thinks, is full evidence of appreciation. The world and the units which comprise it have always admired determination, or what plain people call “grit.” I think it has been given that name because it is that substance which the fighter may throw into the works of the machine which would otherwise roll over him. Working thus, I came to know something of the inner life of these professors, whose daily routine comes to be a struggle with untrained minds which resent all efforts to harness them. The attitude of the average student in the class-room, as I recall it, reminds me of our trotting colt, Beauty. She was so full of trotting blood that at times it boiled over into a desire for a mad run. We thought we had a world-beater, but when we put her on the track she could barely shade four minutes. An experienced trainer took her in hand, put foot-weights and straps on her and forced her to change her gait and concentrate her power. How that beautiful little horse did rage and chafe at this indignity! One could imagine her protest. “Let me be free! Do I not know how to pick up my feet and use my limbs for speed? My father was a king of speed—my mother of royal blood! Set me free! Nature has given me natural swiftness—I do not need your art!”