My last effort to resist my own deafness was made at my bedroom window.

For some time I still heard, faintly and more faintly, the shrill twittering just above me, under the eaves of the house.

When this last poor enjoyment came to an end--when I listened eagerly, desperately, and heard nothing (think of it, _nothing!_)--I gave up the struggle.

Persuasions, arguments, entreaties were entirely without effect on me.

Reckless what came of it, I retired to the one fit place for me--to the solitude in which I have buried myself ever since." VIII "With some difficulty, I discovered the lonely habitation of which was in search.
"No language can describe the heavenly composure of mind that came to me, when I first found myself alone; living the death-in-life of deafness, apart from creatures--no longer my fellow-creatures--who could hear: apart also from those privileged victims of hysterical impulse, who wrote me love-letters, and offered to console the 'poor beautiful deaf man' by marrying him.