22 DECEMBER 1917, Page 11

(To THE EDITOR or THE SPECTATOR.") Ste,—In my son's absence

on his deaf and dumb work, I have attended to his correspondence, and been rejoiced at the interest his letter in your columns seems to have roused. Sines• my retirement, my son luta pulled me in to help in the most interesting and fascinating work he has devoted his life and fortune to—with the result that the Guild of St. John of Beverley appointed me its warden. Its work and objects can be most easily understood by any one sending to the address below a halfpeney- stamped, addressed envelope, when a leaflet explaining its objects will be returned. It is not a society for collecting money, and any gifts made to it unasked are administered by a Committee, who allot any small some in band to needy deaf and dumb objects, and a chartered accountant looks over their accounts. The great need has lately been much brought home to us, in various ways, for a email Home of some sort for the blind deaf and dumb, who are of all people in the world the most absolutely isolated and dependent. A good lady at Worcester ill, in a very small way, doing what she can to interest people in this direction, but in my now wide experience, owing to my son's work, I am often in touch with such patient sufferers, and I can never forget the intense joy of one educated man whom I had not.been able to visit for over a year, who had lost his two sisters, both deaf, dumb, and blind, since my last visit a year ago, when I touched his head, and spoke to him on it, and he knew I was there. I never in all my long and varied experience as a foreign chaplain, Ac., and a panels priest, saw such a marvellous expression on a human face; and I had seen a few weeks before hie" only surviving brother, simis hilly afflicted, but reading his Braile Daily Mail, &c. this wife is deaf and dumb but not blind); and before the blindness came he had been the much-respected head of a Mission in YOrkshire. At Grimsby in the infirmary is a blind deaf-mute who can wake baskets, but owing to want of accommodation, Ac., he now bus to sit with his bends before him. At Erith the Werningtou Home, lull to overflowing, and almost selfeupporting, takes the deaf- mutes from workhouses, de., and the Guardians pay towards their keep—a double benefit ! And now the blind deaf and dumb are the ones who most call for our aid and sympathy. I can offer a fur- nished house, an old " public," converted into a mission-house for work amonggirls, which for six years was carried on by Horbury sisters, obliged now by the exigencies of the war to withdraw, and which we are carrying on under difficulties, if any interested friends can see their any to help me; but it is useless to start except on thoroughly sound financial lines.—I am, Sir, Ac.,