my bedside with a cheery:
"Good morning, Canada! How is the boy this morning?" My answer was the
usual one of the boys in France: "Jakealoo!" Then he pointedly asked me
a question that set me wondering at its purport.

"You are a soldier, are you not, Canada?"

I replied with a somewhat mournful: "Well, I was one time, but I can't
say much as to the truth of that now."

Then he hit me harder than any Hun shell could hit a man. He snapped out
in a voice penetrating, yet with a cheery ring to it: "Well, you are
blind, and for life. How do you like it?"

For about five seconds (it was no longer) the night that sealed my eyes
seemed to clutch my soul. I was for the moment "down and out"; but I
braced my spirits in the presence of this dominating man. I would show
him how a Canadian soldier could bear misfortune. So I gathered myself
together as best I could under the circumstances; swore just a little to
ease my nervous strain, and replied: "That's a hell of a thing to tell a
guy."

Then came words that rolled a mighty load from heart and brain. Captain
Towse praised my soldierly bearing under misfortune, and praise from
this blind double V.C. meant much. He had been sorely smitten at a time
when there was no St. Dunstan's, no Sir Arthur Pearson, to make his
blindness into just a handicap, instead of what it nearly always was
before the days of St. Dunstan's, an unparalleled affliction. But
Captain Towse beat blindness, and did it, for the most part, alone.

Now the cruel fact had to be faced; the only world I would see
henceforth would be that conjured up by the imagination from memories of
the past. Then the difficulties of the future crowded upon me. Even if I
were not to see as other people do I should still have to eat; and
dinners do not grow by the roadside, and if they did I could not see to
pick them up.

"Well, Jim," I said to myself, "you are in a fine fix; what are you
going to do to get those three square meals a day that you were
accustomed to in civil life?" Then I began to wonder what particular
street and what street corner in old Toronto would be best suited for
selling matches, bootlaces, pencils, and postcards. While in this vein,
I conjured up visions of cold, grey days, days when customers did not
appear, and imagined myself led home at night without having enough to
buy even a meal. My humour suggested strolling along the roadside
singing doleful songs. I even chose a song, "The Blind Boy," b