exorcised by a hickory stick. Later, as a young man, I saw Alexander Graham Bell working with the first telephone—a short line between Osgood’s publishing house in Boston and the University Press in Cambridge. It seemed then more of a toy than a device of practical value, and as I remember him, Bell was a rather shabby inventor. His messages were mostly a loud shouting of: “Hello! Hello! Can you understand me?” Beginnings are rarely impressive or attractive, and the actual pioneer seldom recognizes himself as such. I saw one of the great men of Boston stand and laugh at Bell’s clumsy machine and at his efforts to make it work. “Bell,” he said, “it isn’t even a good plaything. I’ll agree to write a letter, walk to Cambridge with it, walk back with the answer and get here long before you can ever get a reply with that thing.” And Bell looked up from his apparent failure with a smile of confidence. “I will make it work. The principle is right. We will find the way. The time will come when this boy here will be able to talk with anyone in any part of New England without raising his voice above an ordinary tone.” And as a boy I thought that if I could ever face criticism and ridicule with such confidence, the world, or at least as much of it as is worth while, would be mine. I had faith in what Bell told us, and looked forward to the day when his words would come true. The prophecy has been more than fulfilled for others, but for us of the silence the telephone remains a mystery which others must interpret for us. Yet somehow I feel as confident as Bell that in some way out of our affliction will come a new means of communication between humans which will make the silence an enviable abiding-place. My children have become greatly interested in radio communication. As I write this one of my boys is developing a crude outfit with which he actually takes sound waves from the air and translates them into music or speech. People tell me of great concerts and speeches sent through the air for hundreds of miles. Tonight thousands of country people, seated in their own homes, are listening while this marvelous instrument reaches up into the air and brings down treasures of sound until it seems as though the speaker or singer were in the next room. We deaf can readily understand what all this will mean for the future; it will undoubtedly do more than the automobile toward bringing humanity together and grouping the peoples of the world in thought and pleasure. Yet how little it will mean to us! It may even be an added cross, for evidently both pleasure and the business of the future are to depend more and more upon the ability to hear well.