Just at this time many people seem to be concerned about what they call “the unseen world.” That means the state of existence after death. Many of our readers have written asking what I think or know about this. Most of those who write me seem to be living in lonely places or under rather hard conditions. They have all lost wife or husband, parent, child, or some dear friend. Now like most other reasoning people, I have tried to imagine what really happens to a human being after what we call death, and I have had some curious experiences which you might or might not credit. When I was a boy, I was thrown much into the society of spiritualists. I knew several so-called “mediums” and attended many “séances.” The evident clumsy and vulgar “fakes” about most of those things disgusted me, yet I must admit that some of these “mediums” did possess a strange and power which I have never been able to understand.
Most of these sincere “mediums” seemed to be people who had suffered greatly and had carried through life some great affliction or trouble over which they constantly brooded. I have come to believe that the blind and deaf and all seriously see and understand things which most others do not. An afflicted person is forced to develop extraordinary power in order to make up for the loss of the missing limb or organ or . The blind man must learn to see with his fingers and his ears. The deaf man must hear with his eyes or develop a sort of quick or instinct of decision. The man into grief or despondency at the loss of fortune, friends or health must rise out of it through some extraordinary development of faith and hope and will-power. Someone has said that the blind or deaf man is “half dead,” and in his efforts to do anything like a full man’s work in the world, he must borrow power from the great “unseen world.” For example, I will ask you this question: Take a woman like Helen Keller, without sight or speech or hearing. Take a man who is totally deaf and also blind—how would they know when they are dead? I think I can understand why it is that real in true religion and thought has for the most part been made by some “man of sorrows,” or people who through great affliction have been forced to go to the “unseen world” for help!
Years ago, in a Western State, there lived a farmer. I do not know whether he is living now or not. Perhaps he will read this. Perhaps he has gone into the silent country to learn what influence the little child had with the Ruler of the universe. This man was deaf. Through long years, his hearing had slowly failed and its going left a dark discouragement upon him. He owned his farm and was moderately well-to-do. A hard worker and honest man, he went about his work mechanically, through habit, with a great hunger in his heart. He did not know what it was; a for human sympathy and love. His wife was a good woman but all her childhood had been starved of sympathy and poetry and she could not understand. She made her husband comfortable and loved him in her strange, inexpressive way, but it is hard, after all, to get over the feeling that the afflicted are abnormal and strange. They had no children, their one little girl had died in babyhood. Sometimes at night you would see the deaf man in the barnyard at the gate, looking off over the hills to the west where the clouds were glorious in the sunset. And his practical wife would see him standing there with the empty milk pail on his arm. She could not understand the vision and glory, the message from the unseen world which filled her husband’s soul at such times. So she would go out to the barnyard, shake her dreaming husband by the arm and shout in his ear:
“Wake up and get that milking done.”
She meant well, and her husband never complained. She meant to save his money, but he knew in such moments that money never could pay his passage off through the purple sunset to the “unseen land.”
Some day, I think I will tell some of the “adventures in the silence,” which fall to the daily life of the deaf man. One Saturday afternoon this man and his wife drove to town together. While his wife was doing her shopping the man walked about to meet some of his old friends. As he stood on the street, a sharp-faced woman came out of the store followed by a little child. It was a little black-haired thing with great brown eyes which carried the look of some hunted wild animal. A poor thin little thing with a shabby dress and shoes. As she passed, the child glanced up at the farmer and saw something in his face that gave her confidence, for she smiled at him and held out her little hand. The woman turned sharply and the frightened child stumbled over a little stone.
“You awkward little brat,” the woman, “take that,” and with her heavy hand she slapped the thin little face. Then something like the love of a lioness for her suddenly started in that farmer’s heart. Many fool jokes have been made about “love at first sight,” but it is really nothing short of a divine message when two lives are suddenly welded together forever. Under excitement, the deaf are rarely , but they are strangely and forcibly . The woman before the roar of that farmer and the little girl ran to him and held his hand for protection. A crowd gathered and Lawyer Brown came running down from his office.
“I want this child,” said the farmer. “You know me; get her for me.”
It was not very hard to do. The woman had married a man with this little girl. The man had run away and left her (I do not much blame him), and this “brat” had been left on her hands.
“Take her, and welcome,” said the sharp-faced woman. “A good riddance to bad rubbish.”
So Lawyer Brown it up legally and the deaf man walked off to where his stood, with the little girl hanging tight to his big finger.
When the woman came with her load of packages, she found her husband sitti............