TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
ADVENTURES IN
SILENCE
_BY_
HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
_Distributed by_
THE RURAL NEW YORKER
333 WEST 30th STREET
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1923
By HERBERT W. COLLINGWOOD
_Printed in U. S. A._
TO E. W. C.
WHOSE RARE SYMPATHY AND
SISTERLY UNDERSTANDING HAVE
HELPED ONE DEAF MAN THROUGH
THE SILENCE.
INTRODUCTION
There are in this country about 75,000 people who were never able to
hear. There are also about half a million who have lost all or part of
their hearing, and more than one million in addition who must use some
contrivance to aid their ears. This army, nearly as large as the one
sent overseas, is forced to live a strange and mysterious life, which
most normal persons know nothing about, even though they come into daily
contact with the outposts. The ordinary deaf man is usually regarded
as a joke or a nuisance, according to the humor of his associates.
This social condition is largely due to the fact that he has found
no place in literature; he occupies an abnormal position because his
story has never been fairly told. The lame, the halt and the blind
have been driven or gently led into literature. Poem, essay and story
have described their lives, their habits, their needs; as a result the
average person of reasonable intelligence has a fair notion of what it
is like to be crippled or blind. _But no one tells what it is like to
be deaf._ No one seems to love a deaf man well enough to analyze his
thought or to describe the remarkable world in which he must live apart,
although he may be close enough to his companions to touch them and
to see their every action. Very likely this is our own fault; perhaps
we have no right to expect the public to do for us what we should do
for ourselves. I have long felt that we are sadly handicapped socially
through this failure to put our life and our strange adventures into
literature—the deaf person must remain a joke or a tragedy until he
has made the world see something of the finer side of his life in the
silence. This is why I have attempted to record these “adventures.” I
am aware that it is rather a crude pioneer performance. Beginnings are
rarely impressive. Much as we respect the pioneer of years ago, very few
of us would care to house and entertain him today. It is my hope that
this volume will lead other deaf persons to record their experiences,
so that we may present our case fully to the public. The great trouble
is that we find it so easy to make a genuine “tale of woe” out of our
experience; it is hardly possible to avoid this if we record honestly.
Perhaps we “enjoy the thought of our affliction” so thoroughly that we
do not realize that the reading public has no use for it. My own method
of avoiding this has been to turn the manuscript over to my daughter
and to walk away from it, leaving her entirely free to cut the “grouch”
out of it with the happy instruments of youth and hope and music. With
us the great adventure of life is to pass contentedly from the world of
sound into the world of silence and there strive to prepare ourselves
for the world of serenity which lies beyond.
H. W. COLLINGWOOD.
CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION 3
TERRORS THAT ARE IMAGINARY 9
ON THE ROAD TO SILENCE 20
HEAD NOISES AND SUBJECTIVE AUDITION 38
FACING THE HARD SITUATION 52
A HEART FOR ANY FATE 73
MEMORIES OF EARLY LIFE 87
EXPERIMENTING WITH THE DEAF MAN 101
COMPANIONS IN TROUBLE 116
THE APPROACH TO SILENCE 133
MIXING WORD MEANINGS 147
THE WHISPERING WIRE 160
“NO MUSIC IN HIMSELF” 178
SILENCE NOT ALWAYS GOLDEN 194
CASES OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY 210
ALL IN A LIFETIME 223
“SUCH TRICKS HATH STRONG IMAGINATION” 239
“THE TERROR THAT FLIETH BY NIGHT” 256
“GROUCH” OR GENTLEMAN 274
ADVENTURES IN SILENCE
CHAPTER I
TERRORS THAT ARE IMAGINARY
The World of Silence Uncharted—Two Initial Incidents,
Darkness in the Tunnel, and at Home—Imaginary Terrors of
the Deaf—When John Harlow Thought He Was a Murderer.
For some years I have considered writing a book concerning the life of
the deaf or the “hard of hearing.” It is hard to understand why our
peculiar and interesting life in the silent world has not been more
fully recorded. We read of adventures in strange lands, far away, yet
here is a stranger country close by, with its mysteries and miseries
uncharted. Having lived in this silent world for some years, I have
often planned to make an effort to describe it. However, like many other
writers, I could not get going. I was not able to start my story until
two rather unusual incidents spurred me into action.
Those of you who know industrial New York understand how the vast army
of commuters is rushed to the city each day and rushed home again at
night. From New Jersey alone a crowd of men and women larger by far than
the entire population of the State of Vermont is carried to the banks of
the Hudson from a territory sixty miles in diameter. Once at the river
bank there are two ways by which these commuters may reach the city.
They may float over in the great ferryboats, or they may dive under the
river in rapid trains driven through a tube far below the water. This
submarine travel is the quicker and more popular way, and during the
rush hours the great tunnel makes one think of a mighty tube of vaseline
or tooth paste with a giant hand squeezing a thick stream of humanity
out of the end.
I reach the Hudson over the Erie Railroad. At this point the underground
tube makes a wide curve inland, and in order to get to the trains we
must walk through a long concrete cave far underground. The other
morning several trains arrived at the Erie station together, and their
passengers were all dumped into this cave like grain poured into a long
sack. There was a solid mass of humanity slowly making its way to the
end. The city worker naturally adapts himself to a crowd. He at once
becomes an organized part of it. Take a thousand countrymen, each from
the wide elbow room of his farm, and throw them together in a mass and
they would trample each other in a panic. The city crowd, as long as
it can be kept good-natured, will march on in orderly fashion; but let
it once be overcome by fear, and it will be more uncontrolled than the
throngs of countrymen.
This cave is brilliantly lighted, and we were moving on in orderly
procession, without thought of danger. We would move forward perhaps 50
feet and then halt for a moment—to move ahead once more. During one
of these halts I looked about me. At my right was a group of giggling
girls; at my left a white-faced, nervous man; behind, a lame man, and in
front two great giants in blouse and overalls. I was close by the change
booth. A slight, pale-faced young woman sat within; the piles of money
in front of her. A husky, rough-looking man was offering a bill to be
changed. I saw it all, and as I looked, in an instant the lights flashed
out and left us in inky darkness.
I have been left in dark, lonely places where I groped about without
touching a human being, but it was far more terrifying to stand in that
closely packed crowd and to realize what would happen in case of a
panic. I reached out my hand and could touch a dozen people, but I could
hear no sound. Suppose these silly girls were to scream; suppose this
man at my elbow were to yell “Fire!” as fools have often done in such
crowds. Suppose that man at the booth reached in, strangled the girl and
swept the money out. At any of these possible alarms that orderly crowd
in the dark might change to a wild mob, smashing and trampling its way
back to the entrance, as uncontrollable as the crazy herds of cattle
I had seen in Western stampedes. The deaf man thinks quickly at such
times, and in the black silence dangers are magnified. The deaf are
usually peculiar in their mental make-up; most of them have developed
the faculty of intuition into a sense, and they can quickly grasp many
situations which the average man would hardly imagine.
But there was no scream or call of alarm. After what seemed to me half
an hour of intense living, the lights flashed back and the big clock at
the end of the cave, solemnly ticking the time away, showed us that we
had been less than 50 seconds in darkness. With a good-natured laugh the
crowd moved on. Those girls had had no thought of screaming. They were
more interested in the group of young men behind them. That nervous man,
whom I had thought trembling with fright, had been laughing at the joke.
The rough-looking man, whom my fancy had painted as a possible murderer
and thief, had been standing before that money like a faithful dog on
guard. There had been danger of a panic, and I had sensed it, but most
of my companions had thought of nothing except the joke of being held up
for a moment. They were happier for their lack of imagination.
At home I started to tell our people about it. The baby sat on my knee.
She had my knife in her hand, paring an apple. Mother sat by the table
sewing, and the children were scattered about the room. Suddenly the
lights snapped out. I put up my hand just in time to catch the knife
as the baby swung her arm at my face. And there we sat, waiting for
the lights to return. There was no fear, for we knew each other. There
was faith in that darkness; there could be no panic. I could hear no
sound, yet the baby curled up close to me and all was well. Darkness is
the worst handicap for the deaf. Give them light and they can generally
manage; but, in the dark, without sound, they are helpless, and unless
they are blessed with strong faith and philosophy, imagination comes
and prints a series of terror pictures for them which you with your
dependable hearing can hardly realize.
These incidents gave me my start by bringing to my mind the story of
John Harlow, curiously typical of the imaginary terrors of the deaf and
the folly of giving way to them. John Harlow was a New England man. He
had all the imagination and all the narrow prejudice of his class; he
had never traveled west of his own corner of the nation, and he was
deaf. The man who carries this combination of qualities about with him
is booked for trouble whenever he gets out among new types of people.
Part of the Harlow property was invested in land lying in the mountains
of Eastern Kentucky, and it became necessary for John to go there, to
look up titles and investigate agents.
About all the average New Englander of that day knew of that mountain
country was that it seemed to be the stage on which bloody family
feuds were fought out. The _Atlantic Monthly_ had printed stories by
Charles Egbert Craddock, and they were accepted as true pictures of
mountain life. John Harlow should have known that the New Englanders
and the mountaineers are alike the purest in real American blood, and
that they must have many traits in common; but he went South with the
firm conviction that life in the mountains must be one long tragedy of
ambuscades and murders.
When a deaf man gets such ideas in mind, imagination prints them in red
ink, because the deaf must brood over their fears and troubles. They
cannot lighten the mind with music or aimless conversation. So when
Harlow left the train at a little mountain hamlet he was not surprised
to find his agent a tall, solemn-eyed man, with a long gray beard; a
typical leader in the family feud, as the Boston man had pictured it.
Harlow mounted the buckboard beside this silent mountaineer, and they
drove off into the mountains just as the dusky shadows were beginning to
creep down into the little nooks and valleys. As soon as this man found
that John was deaf he drove on in silence, glancing at his companion now
and then with that kindly awe with which simple people generally regard
the deaf.
It was quite dark when they reached a small “cove” or opening in which
stood a large house, with the usual farm buildings around it; the
forest crept close to the barn at one point. It struck John that the
buildings were arranged in the form of a fort, but what a chance had
been left for the enemy to creep up through the woods and suddenly fall
upon them! After supper John stood at the window watching the moon lift
itself over the mountain and go climbing up the sky. There came to his
mind the description of just such a moonrise, from one of Craddock’s
stories, where a group of mountaineers came creeping over the hill to
fall upon the home of their enemy. As he stood there he became aware
that the whole family was making preparations for what seemed to him
like defense. The women came and pulled down the curtains, and one of
the boys went out and closed the heavy shutters. His host came and tried
to explain, but Harlow was nervous, and it is hard to make the deaf hear
at such times. All that he could catch were scattered words or parts
of sentences. “We are waiting for them.” “They will be here by nine
o’clock.” “There is a pistol for you.” “They have done us great damage.”
“We must kill them tonight.”
Then the lights were put out, and even the great fire in the fireplace
was dimmed; a rug was thrown over the crack under the door, and they all
sat there—waiting. John Harlow, the deaf man, will never forget that
scene. The little splinter of light from the fire revealed the stern
old man and his three sons waiting, gun in hand, and the women sitting
by the table, knitting mechanically in the dimness—all listening for
the coming of the enemy. By the door lay two large dogs, alert and
watchful. And Harlow, pulled from a comfortable place in Boston and
suddenly made a part of this desperate family quarrel, did not even know
what it was all about. He started twice to demand an explanation in the
loud, harsh tones of the deaf, but the older man quickly waved him to
silence.
How long they sat in that dim light Harlow cannot tell. He never thought
to look at his watch. Suddenly the dogs lying by the door started up
with low growls and bristling hair.
“Here they are,” said the old man; “now get ready.”
He thrust a pistol into John’s hand and took him by the arm as the
boys silently opened the door and passed out with the dogs. John found
himself following. In the moonlight they crept along the shadow of the
buildings out to the point where the woods crawled in almost to the
barn. There the old man crept off to one side. For the moment the moon
was obscured by a passing cloud. Then its light burst upon them, and
John from his hiding-place distinctly saw three forms crawling slowly
across the grassy field to the back of the barn. In the clear moonlight
he could distinguish three white faces, peering through the deep grass.
They would move slowly forward a few feet, and then halt, apparently to
listen. The deaf man in this strange, lonely place, thought he saw three
desperate men making their way to the barn buildings. This very thing
had been described in one of the stories he had read; three mountaineers
had crawled slowly through the grass to set fire to the barn. And it
came to John’s mind that these three white-faced fiends were creeping up
to burn down this home and then shoot down its occupants by the light
from the burning! The nearest crawler came slowly to within two rods of
John and raised his head to look about him. As viewed in the moonlight
it seemed a hideous face, hardly human in its aspect.
John Harlow was a man of peace, and he had been cursing himself for
having been brought into this neighborhood quarrel. It was none of
his business, he told himself, but the sight of this cowardly wretch
crawling up like a snake to fire the buildings was too much for Boston
reserve, and John raised his pistol, took aim at that hateful white
face and pulled the trigger. The figure seemed to throw itself in the
air at the shot, and then it lay quiet, the ghastly face still in the
moonlight.
As John fired there came a sharp volley from the other buildings, and
the two other shapes lay still. A cloud passed over the moon, and
through the darkness, feeling himself a murderer, John found his way
back to the house, where the women were waiting with eager faces. They
lighted the lamps once more and the men came tramping back, to hang
their guns on the wall. They were all in great spirits, and the old man
came to John’s chair and with much shouting and waving his hands, made
the deaf man understand.
“You made a great shot. Got him right between the eyes. We got them all
laid out on the grass—come out and see them.”
But John did not want to see these dead men! He was a murderer. He had
killed a man, perhaps an innocent stranger who had never done him wrong.
It was frightful, but even the women insisted that he come, so with his
eyes shut John permitted himself to be drawn out to the hateful spot
where those dead bodies were lying.
“There’s the one you got!” roared a voice in his ear.
“You must be a dead shot—look at him; see how white he is!”
And Harlow opened his eyes, expecting to see a picture which could never
be erased from memory. There were the dead bodies on the grass before
him in the lantern light. There were three big skunks with more than the
usual amount of white about their faces and backs!
Harlow gazed at them, and his paralyzed mind slowly came back to
normal working order. And then the light came. He had not taken part
in any family feud. No one had tried to kill him. The people of that
section were as kindly neighbors as any he had ever had in Boston. For
some weeks the skunks had been stealing chickens, and the family had
organized this successful defense. It was not the white face of a man
that John had seen in the tangled grass, but the white head and back of
a skunk. He was not a murderer—he was only a skunk-killer!
Most deaf men go through these “adventures in silence.” Many of them
are not particularly thrilling, but they are sometimes exciting enough
to let the imagination run away with us. In what follows I shall try to
make it clear that most of our fears are imaginary—thin ghosts, stuffed
lions, scarecrows (or skunks!) which stand beside the road to frighten
us. For the deaf should know from experience that the only safety in
life is to _go on_, no matter what dangers croakers or cowards may
predict just around the curve.