BOTH of them deaf and close on eighty years old -- She stone-blind, and he nearly so-- Side by side crouching over the fire in a little London hovel--seven shillings a week-- Their joints knotted with rheumatism--their faces all day long mute like statues of all passing expression--(no cloud flying by, no gleam of sunshine there)--lips closed and silent : But for that now and then taking his pipe out of his mouth, He puts his face close to her ear and yells just a word into it, And she nods her blind head and gives a raucous screech in answer. Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Vol. 1 -- No. 3, DECEMBER, 1886 Source: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/journals/freedom/freedom1_3.html... (From : AnarchyArchives.)