My friends detected a change in my manner which alarmed them.

They took me away from London, to try the renovating purity of country air.
"So far as any curative influence over the state of my mind was concerned, the experiment proved to be a failure.
"I had secretly arrived at the conclusion that my deafness was increasing, and that my friends knew it and were concealing it from me.
Determined to put my suspicions to the test, I took long solitary walks in the neighborhood of my country home, and tried to hear the new sounds about me.

I was deaf to everything--with the one exception of the music of the birds.
"How long did I hear the little cheering songsters who comforted me?
"I am unable to measure the interval that elapsed: my memory fails me.

I only know that the time came, when I could see the skylark in the heavens, but could no longer hear its joyous notes.

In a few weeks more the nightingale, and even the loud thrush, became silent birds to my doomed ears.