Читать книгу Adventures in Silence онлайн

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It is strange, indeed, when you come to consider it, that two worlds, separated only by sound, lie side by side and yet so far apart. You cannot understand our life, and perhaps at times you shudder at the thought of how narrow our lives have been made. We who have known sound and lost it have learned to find substitutes, and we often wonder that you narrow your own lives by making such trivial and ignoble use of sound as we see you doing. Fate has narrowed our lives, and we have been forced to broaden them by seeking the larger thoughts. You, it often seems to us, straiten your own lives by dwelling with the smaller things of existence.

The deaf have one advantage at least. They have explored the pleasant roads and the dark alleys of both worlds. If they are of true heart, in doing so they have gained at least a glimpse of that other dim, mysterious country which lies hidden beyond us all. To the blind, the deaf, or to those who carry bravely the cross of some deep trouble, there will surely come vision and promise which never appear to those who are denied the privilege of passing through life under the shadow of a great affliction. But these visions do not come to those who pass on with downcast eyes, permitting their affliction to bear them down. They are reserved for those who defy fate and march through the dark places with smiling faces and uplifted eyes.