While engaged the other day in writing a little ode to the liver pad, I heard a slight noise, and on looking toward the door I saw a boy with his hat in his hand standing on one leg and thoughtfully scratching it with the superior toe of the other foot.

I asked the freckled youth what I could do for him, and he said that there was a man at the foot of the stairs who wished to see me. I asked him then why in the name of a great republic and a free people he didn't see me. Then I told the boy that there was no admission fee; that it was the regular afternoon matinee, and it was a free show.

The frank and manly little feilow then came forward and told me that the man was blind.

It was not intended as a joke. It was a horrible reality, and pretty soon a man into whose sightless orbs the cheerful light of day had not entered for many years came up the stairs and into the office.

I said: "Ah, sir, I see that you are a poor, blind man. You cannot see the green grass and waving trees. While others see the pleasant fields and lovely landscape you wander on year after year in the hopeless gloom. Poor man. Do you not at times yearn for immortality and pine to be among the angels where the light of a glorious eternity will enter upon your sightless vision like a beautiful dream?"

This was a little sentiment that I had committed to memory, being an extract from the Youth's Companion.

He wiped away three or four scalding tears with his sleeve and said that he did. He was getting means, he said, to enable him to go to New York, where he was going to have his eyes taken out and refilled. He also intended to have the cornea filed down and a new crystal put in.

I asked him how much he thought it would cost. He said he thought it could be arranged so that $1,000 would pay the bill. At first I started to draw a check for that amount, and then I thought I would try him with a dollar first.

He took the dollar and walked sadly away.

It always makes me feel bad when I see a fellow creature who is doomed with uncertain steps and sightless eyes to tread his weary way through life, and I cannot be happy when I know that such misery is abroad in the land. I thought how much I had to be thankful for, how fortunate I had been to have all my senses and my bright and beautiful intellect, that I wouldn't take $400 for.

Then I wandered out to a saloon on A street to get a cigar. The blind man was there. He had just poured out about six fingers of Jamaica rum and was setting them up for the boys. I thought I would stand in with the arrangement, so I leaned up against the bar in very classic style and took two cigars at twenty-five cents apiece.

When he came to pay for the goods he shoved out the dollar I gave him, which I recognized, because it was a pewter dollar, and a very inferior pewter dollar at that.

The bartender kicked like a roan cow, and while the excitement was at its height I stole away to where I could be alone with my surging thoughts.

The blind man is still in town, but he is not succeeding very well. Unfortunately he has told several large openfaced lies and the feeling of pity for him has petered out, if I may be allowed that expression.

When he is sober he is going to have his eyes operated on at New York, and when he is drunk he is going to have them attended to in San Francisco. This gives the general appearance of insincerity to his remarks, and the merciless public yearns for him to pack his night shirt, like the Arabs and silently steal away.