he had sorrows he must have
soothed them, and if she had joys he must have shared them, and in this
beautiful world of God, so full of things to look upon and to love, he
must have been eyes of her eyes that could not see. On the other hand,
though Naomi had been deaf, yet if she could have had sight her father
might have held intercourse with her by the light of her eyes, and if
she felt pain he must have seen it, and if she had found pleasure he
must have known it, and what man is, and what woman is, and what the
world and what the sea and what the sky, would have been as an open book
for her to read. But, being blind and deaf together, and, by fault of
being deaf, being dumb as well, what word was to describe the desolation
of her state, the blank void of her isolation--cut off, apart, aloof,
shut in, imprisoned, enchained, a soul without communion with other
souls: alive, and yet dead?

Thus, realising Naomi's condition in; the deep infirmity of her nature,
Israel set himself to consider how he could reach her darkened and
silent soul. And first he tried to learn what good gifts were left to
her, that he might foster them to her advantage and nourish them to his
own great comfort and joy. Yet no gift whatever could he find in her but
the one gift only whereof he had known from the beginning--the gift of
touch and feeling. With this he must make her to see, or else her light
should always be darkness, and with this he must make her to hear, or
silence should be her speech for ever.

Then he remembered that during his years in England he had heard strange
stories of how the dumb had been made to speak though they could not
hear, and the blind and deaf to understand and to answer. So he sent
to England for many books written on the treatment of these children
of affliction, and when they were come he pondered them closely and was
thrilled by the marvellous works they described. But when he came to
practise the precepts they had given him, his spirits flagged, for the
impediments were great. Time after time he tried, and failed always,
to touch by so much as one shaft of light the hidden soul of the child
through its tenement of flesh and blood. Neither the simplest thought
nor the poorest element of an idea found any way to her mind, so dense
were the walls of the prison that encompassed it. "Yes" was a mystery
that could not at first be revealed to her, and "No" was a problem
beyond her power to apprehend. Smiles and