Caroline M. Victor Letter to Mrs. Mina Miller Edison Regarding Invention of Hearing Aid

              [written by T. Edison on top of page] 
Orange NJ Feby 10 89 [Orange...89 underlined] 
Don't get discouraged I am still working 
at the problem.  You overrate the affliction 
Deafness has its compensations 
Yours 
Thomas A Edison 
Mrs. Edison, 
Dear Madame, 
Being an entire stranger to you I suppose that 
I ought to commence this with an apology for what must appear 
an intrusion upon your attention.  I do hereby make it and 
trust to your woman's heart to accept it in the same spirit in 
which it is offered, and to excuse me on the scor of sympathy 
with human afflictions.  I am deaf, or, rather, very hard of 
hearing, and thus am entombed, so far as ordinary sounds are 
concerned, especially those of the human voice.  Years ago 
your husband promised to come to the rescue of souls thus 
imprisoned.  I have waited very patiently for the fulfulment of 
that promise, and the hope of it has been a great consolation. 
But hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and, as year 
after year has come and gone with out the relief, so 
anxiously effected life has become very increasingly dreary 
I have frequently written to Mr. Edison urging him to use his 
God-given powers to help others less favored than himself; 
hitherto he is as deaf to my petition as I am to all sound. 
It is the shame of surgery that the deaf are so neglected.  Every 
other physical infirmity is helped or alleviated while deafness 
remains as helpless as before the flood.  Arms, legs, eyes 
teeth, hair- every part of the human body is studied