The late Booth Tarkington always said： "I could take anything that life could force upon me except one thing： blindness. I could never endure that."
Then one day， when he was along in his sixties， Tarkington glanced down at the carpet on the floor. The colors were blurred. He couldn' t see the pattern. He went to a specialist. He learned the tragic truth： he was losing his sight. One eye was nearly blind； the other would follow. That which he feared most had come upon him.
And how did Tarkington react to this"worst of all disasters？" Did he feel： "This is it！ This is the end of my life？" No， to his amazement， he felt quite gay. He even called upon his humor. Floating "specks" annoyed him； they would swim across his eyes and cut off his vision. Yet when the largest of these specks would swim across his sight， he would say： "Hello！There' s Grandfather again！Wonder where he' s going on this fine morning！"
How could fate ever conquer a spirit like that？ The answer is it couldn' t. When total blindness closed in， Tarkington said： "I found I could take the loss of my eyesight， just as a man can take anything else. If I lost all five of my senses， I know I could live on inside my mind. For it is in the mind we see， and in the mind we live， whether we know it or not."
In the hope of restoring his eyesight， Tarkington had to go through more than twelve operations within one year. With local anaesthetic！ Did he rail against this？ He knew it had to be done. He knew he couldn' t escape it， so the only way to lessen his suffering was to take it with grace. He refused a private room at the hospital and went into a ward， where he could be with other people who had troubles， too. He tried to cheer them up. And when he had to submit to repeated operations—fully conscious of what was being done to his eyes—he tried to remember how fortunate he was. "How wonderful！" he said. "How wonderful， that science now has the skill to operate on anything so delicate as the human eye！"