My experience with this variety of costume had begun years before, when I happened to be a receptive candidate for Governor of New Jersey on this same Prohibition ticket. My boom never developed beyond that receptive stage, but I started for the convention feeling well disposed toward myself—as I presume all candidates do. At Trenton I had to hunt for the convention hall, and, as usual, tried to select the proper guide from his appearance. On a street corner stood a portly, well-filled gentleman, wearing a suit of solemn black, with a beard to match; also there was the white necktie and the voluminous white vest. In truth, he was a prosperous grocer come to town to marry his third wife, but to me he looked like the chairman of the coming convention. “Can you tell me where the convention is to be held?” “What convention?” “Why, the State Prohibition convention. I thought you were a brother delegate.” “Brother nothing.” “But where is it to be held?” He muttered something that was lost in that black beard. I could not get it, and finally held out my notebook and pencil. He stared at me for a moment, and then wrote—about as he would enter an order of salt fish for Mrs. Brown: “The Lord knows. I don’t.” It was a shock to my boom, the first of many it received that day. For a moment depression came over me. Then philosophy came to my aid and gave me the proper answer. “Well, if the Lord really knows, I guess it doesn’t make so much difference whether you do or not! It is better to trust in the Lord.” I left him staring after me. It is doubtful if he ever got the full sense of the incident, but I have always remembered it. It is one of my landmarks along the road to silence. For if the Lord designs that the deaf man shall reach the convention, all the powers of prejudice and selfishness cannot keep him away. I finally found a bootblack who gave me the proper directions. One Winter’s night I found myself in the railroad station of a small New England town, waiting for a belated train. A blizzard was raging outside, with the mercury in the thermometer close to zero. My train was far up in Vermont, four hours behind time, feebly plowing through snowdrifts. In order to obtain a berth and comfortable passage for New York on that train it was necessary to ’phone Springfield and have the agent there catch the train at some stopping place up country to make arrangements. Perhaps a prudent deaf man should have given up the effort and remained in that little town overnight. But I have found that the deaf, even more than others, need the constant stimulus of attempting the difficult or impossible.