60 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



longer, without apparent cause either in exposure or 

 in lack of medical care. Events at home were such 

 as to make a man of his strong family affections most 

 anxious. His father had suffered serious loss by fire, 

 and three of his brothers had gone to the far West, 

 seeking opportunities denied them in rural New York. 

 To his young imagination the remote and untried 

 West had perhaps more of evil than good in it for 

 such adventurous spirits as might brave its perils. 

 Troubled and perplexed, what wonder that the blind 

 man's courage should for a moment desert him ? 



" I must give up this struggle ; it's no use going on 

 in this way ; my case is hopeless," he would say, bid- 

 ding his sister return home and leave him to his fate. 

 For days and weeks his despair continued, and he 

 would make no effort to* go on with work of any kind.* 



* When it is remembered that before he had been with Dr. Elliott a year 

 he had advanced as far toward recovery as ever he had done in the ten 

 years following, it does not seem strange that he should at last lose heart. 

 Long before this time many of his friends had become quite hopeless of 

 his recovery, and even his mother, one of the last to give up the case, at 

 length undertook to reconcile him to a life of blindness. " Nothing can 

 be worse," she would say to him, " than these endless alternations of hope 

 and despair. If, in all the fifteen years you have been struggling with dis- 

 ease, the only gain has been brief intervals of partial seeing intervals that 

 continually become rarer and shorter, while the subsequent lapse into 

 blindness grows harder and harder to bear how much happier you would 

 be to give it up and adapt yourself to the circumstances." She instanced 

 blind men who were leading happy, useful lives, and assured her son that 

 he could always depend upon the affection and devotion of his family and 

 friends. 



In after years, when the subject was referred to, he always said that he 

 never quite ceased to expect recovery. But there were periods when it 

 seemed to his friends that he had lost all hope. At these times he 

 shunned society, even that of his nearest companions. He would some- 

 times lock the door of his chamber and remain for hours, and even days, 

 in solitude. It seemed as if he shrank even from sympathy. Worry always 



