Mr. Cram looked at me with scorn, and turning to the applicant he shouted at the top of his voice:
"How old are you?"
"A little louder," the man begged.
The investigator puffed at his pipe in disgust, and after my insistence consented to write down his questions.
"How long have you been deaf?" he wrote down.
"I have just been discharged from the hospital," the man answered. "They made an operation on my ears."
"You see?" I put in.
"Oh! it's all a fake—a rotten old fake. He hears better than you and I, I tell you," Cram still insisted.
"Have you a doctor's certificate?" I wrote on a slip, handing it to the applicant.