Years of Blindness. 43 



recovery, he found his eyes growing worse ; and one 

 day, in his impatience, he asked the doctor's assistant 

 very pointedly if there was really any chance of his 

 getting well or not. With injunction of strict secrecy 

 about such a breach of confidence, the young physi- 

 cian replied that Dr. Delafield's encouraging tone was 

 simply "a way of his," and that he really considered 

 the case incurable. This opinion the kind but plain- 

 speaking young oculist shared, and proceeded to for- 

 tify with reasons of his own, but Youmans was not yet 

 ready thus to abandon hope. If he had any strength of 

 character or fertility of resource in a dire emergency, 

 the time had now come for its exercise. Alone in a 

 large city, amid surroundings of which he had not the 

 slightest experience, friendless, stone-blind, baffled in 

 his hopes of the infirmary, how should he make a fur- 

 ther attempt to get efficient medical aid ? Among his 

 fellow-patients were half a dozen other young men in 

 similar plight, all hopeless of benefit from a further 

 stay in that place, all poor, one or two actually penni- 

 less and dependent on charity. One of them, how- 

 ever, could see well enough to serve as pilot for the 

 others, and so the whole party sallied forth into the 

 streets and went about from one oculist's office to 

 another in quest of advice. Youmans, the youngest of 

 the company, was relied upon as spokesman for all. 

 Whether it was he that organized the movement or 

 not, one sees in it the boldness of purpose and vigour of 

 execution that always characterized his way of doing 

 things. We can imagine the anxiety with which he 

 listened, in one office after another, to the various 

 opinions offered as to whether he was likely ever again 

 to see the light of day. Some of the physicians pro- 

 nounced cure impossible; one promised recovery on 



