ON THE ROAD TO SILENCE
The Nature of the Journey to the Silent
Country—Substitutes for Perfect Silence—Sounds of
Nature Companionable—The Direct Attack—“Just As I
am”—Compensation in Idealized Memories—“Cut Out the
Bitterness”—Reasons for Writing the Book—A Matter of
Point of View, Concerning John Armstrong’s Possessions.
I think life has given me a certificate which qualifies me to act as
guide and interpreter on the journey to the Silent Land. For forty
years I have been traveling along the road to silence. I have seen some
unfortunate people who were suddenly deprived of their hearing, as it
seemed without warning. Fate did not give them even a chance to prepare
for the death of sound. It was as if some cruel hand had suddenly
dragged them into a prison, a form of living death through which the
poor bewildered wretches must wander aimlessly until they could in some
feeble way adjust themselves to the new conditions which we shall find
in the world of silence. Happily my journey was not made in that way.
I have wandered slowly and gently along the road, each year coming a
little nearer to silence, yet working on so easily and unobtrusively
that the way has not seemed hard and rough. I know every step of the
road, and I can point out the landmarks as we pass along. You may be
compelled to travel over the same route alone some day. Perhaps your
feet are upon it even now, unknown to you. Take my advice and notice the
milestones as you pass them.
Let’s not hurry. Let our journey be like one of those happy family
wanderings in the old farm days, long before the age of gasoline. On a
Sunday afternoon we would all start walking, on past the back of the
farm. Father, mother and the baby, all would go. We could stop to drink
from the spring, to rest under the pines, to stand on the hill looking
off over the valleys. The beauty of the walk was that time was no
object; our destination was nowhere in particular, and we always reached
it. No one hears of those family trips in these days. We “go” now. The
family, smaller than of old, will crowd into a car and go rushing about
the country in an effort to cover as many miles as possible, and to do
as little sight-seeing as may be during the rush. Now, we shall not
hurry, and there will be no great objection to our leaving the road now
and then to gather flowers or bright stones, or to watch a bird or a
squirrel. We shall need all the pleasant memories we can think of when
we arrive.
Very likely you have before now entered into a “solitude where none
intrude,” and have thought yourself entirely alone in the silence. But
you had not reached the real end of the road. You missed some of the
familiar sounds of your everyday life, but there were substitutes. There
was always the low growl of the ocean, the murmur of the wind among
the trees, the cheerful ripple of the brook, the song of the birds, or
some of the many sweet sounds of nature. It was not the silence which
we know, nor were the voices which came to you harsh or distorted. They
were clear and true, even though they were strange to you.
I did not realize how largely the habits of our life are bound up in
sound until some years ago we hired a city woman to come and work in our
farmhouse. We live in a lonely place. This woman spent one night with
us. In the morning she came with terror in her eyes and begged to be
taken back to New York.
“It’s so still here; I can’t sleep!”
It was true. Her ears had become so accustomed to the harsh noises of
the city that every nerve and faculty had been tuned to them. The quiet
of the country was as irksome to her as the constant city noises are
annoying to the countryman, just from his silent hills. Perhaps you
have awakened suddenly in the night in some quiet country place, let us
say in the loneliness of Winter in the hill country. You looked from
the window across the glittering snow to the dark pines which seemed to
prison the farm and house. You fancied that you had finally reached
the world of silence, and you were seized by a nameless terror as you
imagined what would happen to you if sight were suddenly withdrawn. Then
you heard the timbers of the house creak with the cold, the friendly
wind sighed through the trees and around the corner of the house. There
came faint chords of weird music as from an æolian harp when it passed
over some wire fence. Or perhaps there came to you the faint step of
some prowling animal. Then the terror vanished before these sounds of
the night. For this is not the world which I ask you to enter with me.
We are bound for the world of the deaf. I tell you in advance that it
is a dull, drab world, without music or pleasant conversation, into
which none of the natural tones of the human voice or the multitudinous
sounds of nature can come. You must leave them all behind, and you will
never realize how much they have meant to you until they are out of your
reach. Could you readjust your life for a new adventure in this strange
world?
The deaf man must carry this world of silence about with him always,
and it leads him into strange performances. I know a deaf man who went
to a church service. He could hear nothing of the sermon, but he felt
something of the glory of worship, and when the congregation stood up to
sing my deaf friend felt that here was where he could help.
“Just as I am, without one plea,” announced the preacher, and the deaf
man’s wife found the place in the hymn book. He sang along with the rest
and thoroughly enjoyed it. However, one of the penalties of the Silent
Country is that its inhabitants can rarely keep in step with the crowd.
My friend did not realize that at the end of each verse the organist was
expected to play a short interlude before the next verse started. There
has never seemed to me to be any reason for these ornamental musical
flourishes; they merely keep us from getting on with our singing.
The deaf man knew nothing of all this. He was there to finish the
singing of that hymn. It is a habit of the deaf to go straight to the
end, since there is no reason why they should stop to listen. So he
started in on the second verse as all the rest were marking time through
that useless interlude, and he sang a solo:
“Just as I am, and waiting not!”
He sang with all his power, he was in good voice and his heart was
full of the glory of the service. He was never a singer at best, and
the voice of a deaf person is never musical. This hard, metallic voice
cut into that interlude much like the snarl of a buzz saw. His wife
tried to stop him, but he could not quite get the idea, and he sang
on. It is rather a curious commentary on the slavery to habit which
most intelligent human beings willingly assume that this one earnest
man, just as little out of step, nearly destroyed the inspiration of
that church service. The unconscious solo would have taken all the
worship from the hearts of that congregation had it not been for the
quick-witted organist.
Some human beings have risen to the mental capacity of animals in
understanding and conveying a form of unspoken language. It may be
“instinct,” “intuition,” or what you will, but in some way they are able
to convey their meaning without words. I have found many such people
in the world of silence. The organist possessed this power. Before the
deaf man had sung five words she had stopped playing her interlude, had
caught the time of what he was singing, and was signaling the choir to
join her. By the time they reached the end of the second line at “one
dark spot” the entire congregation was singing as though nothing had
happened. The minister, too, sensed the situation, for at the end of the
verse, before the deaf man could make another start, he said:
“Let us pray.” And the incident was happily closed.
As I look about me in the world of silence and see some of the sad
blunders of my fellows, I feel that in their poor way they illustrate
something of the life tragedy which often engulfs the reformer. The deaf
man does not know or has forgotten that those who are blessed with good
hearing do not and cannot go straight to the mark. Much of their time
is wasted on useless “interludes” or ornamental flourishes which mean
nothing in work or worship. This man at the church, while his heart
was full, could only think of getting that hymn through, earnestly,
lovingly, and without loss of time. He may have had more true worship in
his heart than any other member of the congregation, but he dropped just
a little out of form, and he quickly became a ridiculous nuisance. The
truth is, if you did but know it, that some of your clumsy efforts to
keep step with so-called fashionable people make you far more ridiculous
than those of us who fall out of step. Nature never intended your big
feet for dancing, but, because others dance, you must try it.
Your reformer broods over his mission until it becomes a part of his
life, a habit which he cannot break. He reaches a position where he
cannot compromise, sidestep or wait patiently. He goes ahead and never
waits for “interludes,” which most of us must put in between efforts at
“reform.” The rest of the world cannot follow him. He becomes a “crank,”
a “nut,” or an “old stick,” because he cannot stop with the crowd and
play with the theory of reform, but must push on with all his soul.
It seems to us who look out upon the aimless procession moving before
us that an average man feels that he cannot “succeed” unless he stops
at command and plays the petty games of society; he has sold himself
into the slavery of habit and fashion, though he knows how poor and
trivial they may be. This is bad enough, but it is worse to see scores
of people fastening the handcuffs on their children. Now and then the
organist has visions which show her what to do, and she swings the
great congregation to the deaf man’s lead. Unhappily there are few such
organists.
It is strange, indeed, when you come to consider it, that two worlds,
separated only by sound, lie side by side and yet so far apart. You
cannot understand our life, and perhaps at times you shudder at the
thought of how narrow our lives have been made. We who have known sound
and lost it have learned to find substitutes, and we often wonder that
you narrow your own lives by making such trivial and ignoble use of
sound as we see you doing. Fate has narrowed our lives, and we have been
forced to broaden them by seeking the larger thoughts. You, it often
seems to us, straiten your own lives by dwelling with the smaller things
of existence.
The deaf have one advantage at least. They have explored the pleasant
roads and the dark alleys of both worlds. If they are of true heart,
in doing so they have gained at least a glimpse of that other dim,
mysterious country which lies hidden beyond us all. To the blind, the
deaf, or to those who carry bravely the cross of some deep trouble,
there will surely come vision and promise which never appear to those
who are denied the privilege of passing through life under the shadow of
a great affliction. But these visions do not come to those who pass on
with downcast eyes, permitting their affliction to bear them down. They
are reserved for those who defy fate and march through the dark places
with smiling faces and uplifted eyes.
Someone has said that the deaf man is half dead, because he is unable to
separate in his life the living memory or sound from the deadness of the
silence.
“I must walk softly all my days in the bitterness of my soul.”
That was the old prophet’s dismal view of life, and how often have I
heard hopeless sufferers, half insane with the jangle of head noises,
quote that passage.
“Cut out the bitterness, and I’ll walk softly with you,” was the comment
of one brave soul who would not subscribe to the whole doctrine. I
have had two deaf men quote that and tell me that their condition
reminded them of what they had read of prison life in the Russian mines.
Formerly, in some of these mines, men were chained together at their
work below ground. Sometimes, when one member of the hideous partnership
died, the survivor did not have his chains removed for days! One of my
friends told me that he felt as though his life was passed dragging
about wherever he went the dead body of sound, and what it had meant
to his former life. Unless he could keep his mind fully occupied there
would rise up before him the dim picture of the prisoner dragging his
dead partner through the horrors of their underground prison. The other
man who made the comparison had a happier view of life. He told me
that he had read all he could find on the subject, and that when these
men were released from their hateful prison and brought up into the
sunlight, they seemed to know much about the great mystery into which we
all must enter. So he felt that he was not carrying the dead around with
him, but rather the living, for the spirit of the old life, the best of
it in memory and inspiration, remained with him. So we deaf are like you
of the sound-world in that some of us sink under our afflictions, while
to others of us they are stepping-stones.
I have come to think that of all the human faculties, sound is the most
closely associated with life. The blind man may say that light means
more than sound; I do not know how the question can be fairly argued,
but I think in most cases deafness removes us further from the real joy
of living. You will notice that the blind are usually more cheerful
than the deaf. But at any rate, all the seriously afflicted have lost
something of life and are not on terms of full equality with those who
are normal. Their compensations must come largely from another world.
Most people pass through life associating only with the living, and
thus give but little thought to any world beside their own. The great
majority of the people to whom I have talked about the other life are
Christians, more or less interested in church or charitable work, yet
they have no conception of what lies beyond. Many of them dimly imagine
a dark valley or a black hole in the wall through which they will grope
their way, hopeful that at some corner they may come upon the light. The
law of compensation must give those of us who have lost an essential
of human life a greater insight into that other shadowy existence. For
us who have entered the silence there must somewhere be substitutes
for music and for the charm of the human voice. Most of the deaf who
formerly heard carry with them memories of music or kindly words,
legacies from the world of sound. These are treasured in the brain, and
as the years go by they become more and more ideal. Just as the chemist
may by continued analysis find new treasures in substances which others
have discarded, the man whose ears are sealed may find new beauties in
an old song, or in some word lightly spoken, which you in your wild riot
of sound have never discovered. And perhaps out of this long-continued
analysis there may come fragments of a new language, a vision which
may give one a closer view or a keener knowledge of worlds beyond. Who
knows? Again, one may not only add the beauty of brightness to the past,
but one may, if he will, summon the very imps of darkness out of the
shadows for their hateful work of destroying faith and hope in the human
heart. The Kingdom of Heaven or the prison of hell will be built as one
may decide—and his tool is the brain.
“_For as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he!_”
It is my conviction that this proverb was written by a deaf man, who had
thoroughly explored the world of silence!
While the inhabitants of every locality are usually anxious to increase
their population, I am very frank to say that some of the recruits
wished upon us are not a full credit to our community. The world in
which we must live is naturally gloomy, where canned sunshine must be
used about as canned fruit is carried into the northern snows. It is
no help to have our ranks filled with discontented, unhappy beings
who spend the years which might be made the best of their lives in
bemoaning their fate and reminding the rest of us of our affliction.
What we are trying to do is to forget it as far as we can. The deaf
man does not want the world’s pity. That is the most distasteful thing
you can hand him, even though it be wrapped in gold. For the expressed
pity of our friends only leads to self-pity, and that, sooner or later,
will pit the face of the soul like a case of moral smallpox. The most
depressing thing I have to encounter is the well-meant pity of friends
and acquaintances. I know from their faces that they are shuddering at
the thought of my affliction, and I see them discussing it, as they
look at me! Why can they not stop cultivating my trouble? All we ask
is a fair chance to make a self-respecting living and to be treated as
human beings. This compassion makes me feel that I am being analyzed and
separated like an anatomical specimen; there will come to me out of the
distant past of sound the bitter words of a great actor, who said as
Shylock:
“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”
I was brought up among deaf people. They seemed rather amusing to me,
and I could not imagine any condition which could put me in their place.
I now see that I should have profited by a study of their life and
habits. I could have been better prepared to live the life of a prisoner
in the silent world. Would I have struggled for greater power and
wealth? No, for they are not, after all, greater essentials here than in
your world. Were I to go over the road again, I should fill my mind and
soul with music, and should strive with every possible sacrifice to fill
out my life with enduring friendships, the kind that come with youth.
It seems to be practically impossible for the deaf man to gain that
friendship which is stronger than any other human tie. My aurist once
told me that at least sixty per cent of the people we meet in everyday
life have lost part of their hearing. They cannot be called deaf, but
the hearing is imperfect and deafness is progressive. Many of you who
read this may be slowly traveling toward our world, without really
knowing it. There are in the country today about sixty thousand deaf
and dumb persons. If we include these, my estimate is that there are at
least half a million persons who have little or no hearing, while over
one million are obliged to use some kind of a device for the ears. So we
may safely claim that our world is likely to become more thickly settled
in the future, and we may well prepare to number the streets and put up
signboards.
And I will admit another reason for telling you about this quiet
country. It concerns our own people, for whom I speak. I would gladly
do what I can to make life easier for the deaf. Their lot is usually
made harder through the failure of others to understand the affliction,
and to realize what it means to live in the silence. In my own case
I can make no complaint. I am confident that society has treated me
better than I deserve, given me more than I have returned. I have been
blessed with family and friends who have made my affliction far easier
than it might have been. I realize that it is not easy for the ordinary
person to be patient and fair with the deaf. We may so easily become
nuisances. I presume that there is no harder test of a woman’s character
and ability than for her to serve as the wife of a deaf man, to endure
his moods and oddities and suspicions with gentleness and patience and
loving help. A woman may well hesitate to enter such a life unless the
man is of very superior character.
Now and then I meet deaf people who complain bitterly at the treatment
which society metes out to them. In most cases I think they are wrong,
for we must all admit squarely the foundation fact of our affliction,
which is that we may very easily become a trouble and a nuisance
socially. We represent perhaps two per cent of the nation’s population,
and we can hardly expect the other ninety-eight per cent always to
understand us. I have had people move away from me as though they
expected me to bite them. Some sensitive souls might feel that they
were thus associated with mad dogs, but it is better to see the humor
of it. For my part, I have come to realize that I am barred from terms
of social equality with those who live in the kingdom of sound. I have
come to be prepared for a certain amount of impatience and annoyance. I
am often myself impatient with those dull souls who depend so entirely
upon their ears that they have failed to cultivate the instinct or the
intuition which enables us to grasp a situation at a glance. But I do
ask for our people a fair hearing, if I may put it that way. While we
are deprived of many of your opportunities and possibilities, we think
we have developed something which you lack, perhaps unconsciously. We
can turn our experience over to you if you will be patient.
Do not fear that I shall corner you to make you listen to a tale of woe.
The truth is that I often feel, in all sincerity, exceedingly sorry for
you poor unfortunates who must listen to all the small talk and the
skim-milk of conversation.
“I saw a smith stand with his hammer—thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news!”
It is so long since I have been able to chatter and play with words that
I forget what people talk about. Some of them at least seem to have
talked their tongues loose from their brains. I often ask intelligent
people after this chatter what it was all about, and whether their
brains were really working as they babbled on. Not one in ten can give
any good reason for the conversation or remember twenty words of it.
Do you wonder that we of the silence, seeing this waste of words, pick
up our strong and enduring book and wander away with the great undying
characters of history, rather thankful that we are not as other men,
condemned to waste good time on such trivial exercise of ears and
tongues?
That is the way we like to think about it, but there is a worm in this
philosophy after all. I have reasoned things out in this way fifty
times; the logic seems perfect, and yet my mind works back from my book
to the story of John Armstrong and his New England farm.
John was a seedling, rooted in one of those Vermont hill farms. The
Psalmist tells of a man who is like “a tree planted by the rivers of
water”; such a tree puts its roots down until it becomes well-nigh
impossible to pull them out of the earth. There had been a mortgage
howling at the Armstrong door for generations. Not much beside family
pride can be grown on these hillsides, and John would have spent his
life cultivating it to the end, if his lungs hadn’t given out. The
country doctor put it to him straight; it was stay on the hills and
die, or go to the Western desert and probably live. In some way the
love of life proved strongest. John bequeathed his share of the family
pride to brother Henry and went to Arizona. There he lost the use of one
lung, but filled his pockets with money. He secured a great tract of
desert land, and one day the engineers turned the course of a mountain
stream and spread it over John’s land. At home in Vermont the little
streams tumbled down hill, played with a few mill wheels, gave drink to
a few cows and sheep, and played on until they reached the river, to be
finally lost in the ocean. In Arizona the river caused the desert to
bloom with Alfalfa, and wheat, and orchards, thus turning the sand to
gold.
And one day John stood on the mountain with his friends and looked over
the glowing country, all his—wealth uncounted. All his! Worth an entire
county of Vermont, so his friends told him.
“You should be a happy man,” they said, “with all that wealth and power
taken from the sand. A happy man—what more can you ask?”
“I know it,” said John. “I know it—and yet, in spite of it all, right
face to face with all this wealth, I’d give the whole darned country for
just one week in that Vermont pasture in June!”
And so, unmolested in my world of silence, free from chatter and small
talk, able to concentrate my mind on strong books, I look across to the
idle gossipers and know just how John Armstrong felt. I would give up
all this restful calm if I could only hear my boy play his violin, if I
could only hear little Rose when she comes to say good-night, if I could
only hear that bird which they say is singing to her young in yonder
tree.