It was necessary to find some honest proxy at once. The ticket agent had closed his office and gone home. The array of available talent spread before me on the seats was not, at first sight, promising. A German Socialist had fallen asleep after a violent discussion about the war. There was an Irishman who gave full evidence to at least three senses that he did not favor prohibition enforcement. A fat, good-natured looking colored man with a stupid moon face and a receding chin sprawled over one of the wooden benches. An Italian woman, surrounded by several great packages, was holding a sleeping child. There were two ladies of uncertain age, who evidently belonged to that unmistakable class of society—the New England old maid. At one side, figuring out his day’s sales of cigars and notions, was a typical Hebrew drummer, a little rat-faced man with hooked nose, low, receding forehead, and bald head and beady eyes. Now, if you had been the deaf man, forced to depend on one of these agents to arrange for a sleeping place, which one would you have chosen? The negro was too stupid, the German too belligerent, the Irishman would have tried to bully Springfield, and who could think of asking the stern-faced ladies to discuss such a matter? I selected the drummer as the most promising material. “Sure, I get it,” he said, when I gave him a statement of what I wanted. He disappeared inside the telephone booth, where I soon saw him gesticulating and shrugging his shoulders as he talked rapidly. He looked around at me, and with my slight knowledge of lip-reading, I could make out: “This is a great man what asks this. You must help him out.” Soon he came rushing out holding up one finger. “It cost you one dollar!” I paid him and back he went to his conversation. Before long he emerged with a paper, on which he had written the name of the car, the number of my berth, the name of the conductor, and the time of the train’s arrival. It was all there. How he did it I have never been able to tell. It was a marvel of speedy, skilful work. I seldom find such an efficient proxy, but through long experience one becomes able to select some stranger with patience enough to attempt the job. One man who seemed fairly intelligent completely twisted my message, and put me to no end of trouble. Once a woman deliberately misrepresented me, but I was saved by a good Samaritan who stood by, heard part of the discussion, and set me right. Sometimes in public places the telephone operator will send the message and report the answer, but it seems unfair to ask such service. A very dignified gentleman once asked a stranger to telephone for him, and was answered thus: “Why not go and visit with the ‘hello girl’ over there?”