He carried a big box strapped to his shoulders in which he took cigars to the town to sell, or trade for goods. He long ago married a widow who lived in a village twenty miles north of the city, where he had been born and reared. He still manufactured a poor variety of domestic cigars, and when a stock accumulated beyond the local trade he would load a dozen boxes on his back and start for the city, stopping to peddle his goods in every little hamlet along the road. Many good people ridiculed the idea of Peter Paul enjoying the society of a wife. They thought it an extravagant idea. He should be denied all this, because of his calamity. Men who value woman’s love next to nothing, simply laughed at Peter. He could get along so easily without such a luxury. But I tell you, dear reader, the man who puts no value on woman’s love has more of the animal in him than true manhood. He makes the poorest citizen of all men. And Peter Paul, though stone blind, has as much right to value woman’s love as any other living man. His world is dark enough, God knows, without denying him the one ray of light and happiness that falls across his midnight road. Perhaps the stage driver wondered why I was so silent during the rest of the ride into town, but I could not erase blind Peter Paul from my mind. Not only Peter, but in the city he had a brother and sister who were blind. These two lived and kept house, being assisted by good neighbors to obtain the necessaries of life. They inherited weak eyes from their maternal parent, and through poverty and neglect they were allowed to drift into absolute blindness without a single effort on the part of society to save them from the awful calamity. Seems to me that whatever knowledge science has gained in the treatment of human eyes should be a free gift to humanity. If ever a public fund was needed to save the unfortunate from such a calamity of darkness, surely the treatment of the eyes should be as free as the salvation of Jesus Christ. I shut my eyes and see poor old Peter feeling his way down the dusty road, with a big box strapped to his back, and I can not help but believe that God is holding society guilty of brutal neglect. Seems to me that when blind Peter Paul goes feeling his way to the gates of heaven many of his sins will be taken from his back and charged up to society. THE THREE CLASSES Montgomery Quiggle once said: “The world’s population is divided into three classes—those who have forged ahead of accepted theories, those who have only reached the level of accepted theories, and those who are slowly trudging along behind the march of progress without any theories at all. And the strange thing of it all is, the middle class rule, instead of those in advance.”