MEMORIES OF EARLY LIFE
Reflection versus Conversation—Old Memories—The Lecture
and the Whipping—Education and the Stick—Ridicule
Unbearable to the Deaf—The Office Fight—The Dangers of
Bluffing.
The deaf man may not excel in conversation, but he is usually strong on
reflection. He has plenty of time, for his life is roughly divided into
three chief periods, working, sleeping and thinking. It may safely be
said that the character and temper of the deaf are determined rather by
their thought than by their work. The greater part of their thinking
is a form of mental analysis. They like to go back to the beginning of
things. That is why the deaf man is such a remarkably superior specimen
of a “grouch” when he puts himself to the task of analyzing his own
troubles. If you could read the thoughts of the deaf as they sit by
themselves without book or work you would find that they are searching
the past to find something which may be compared to their present
experience.
It is a curious mental sensation, probably far different from anything
that comes to you in your world of sound, unless it comes in moments of
depression, or when you are deeply stirred by old memories. Sometimes
in the evening we become tired of reading and we cannot join in the
music or chatter about us; it is too dark to work outdoors, and we have
accomplished enough for the day. So we amuse ourselves by trying to go
back to the beginnings of things. When did I first fall in love with the
portly lady who sits at the other side of the fire? How much smaller was
she then? When did I find the first gray hair? When did I first discover
that my eyes had failed so that I could not read signs across the way?
When did I begin to discover something of the real life difference
between work and play? We think these things out to no particular
advantage, except that perhaps they may form a text for a moral lecture
to our young people. And now I find that my children very properly pay
little attention to my lectures. I have stopped delivering them since
going back to the original dissertation given for my benefit.
The old gentleman who brought me up was much addicted to the lecture
cure for youthful depravity. He would seat me in the corner on a little
cricket, and with his long forefinger well extended would depict the
sin and laziness of “this young generation” whenever I forgot to water
the horses or to feed the hens. I can see him now, with his spectacles
pushed up to the top of his bald head, and that thick finger projected
at me as he recounted the hardships of his own boyhood, and his own
faithful and unfailing service. What a remarkable boy he must have
been! Then his wife, who was very deaf, and, more unfortunately, very
inquisitive, would appear at the door and shout: “What say?” Her husband
would patiently gather his lungs full of air, make a trumpet of his
hands and roar in her ear:
“I’m telling the boy about the terrible sin and danger of this young
generation. What kind of a world will it be, I ask you, when such boys
as that grow up to control things? It will be another Babylon, and I
don’t want to live to see it.”
And his wife, getting only a word here and there, would quote some
appropriate passage from Isaiah and go back to her work well satisfied
that she had done her duty.
“Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are for signs
and for wonders in Israel:” And now it seems to me, as I sit here, a
gray-haired man of the silent world, that I have seen many of the signs
and wonders, though I did not recognize them as they passed by. That
“sinful young generation” has grown up, and men of my age may be said
to control the nation. It seems to me that it is a good world after
all, and I believe that my mischief-making children will grow up into a
steadily developing generation which will make it better yet. For here
in the silent world we learn to smile at youthful antics, and to have
great charity for them.
The earliest incident of my childhood that I can remember is the
time my father pretended to give us a whipping. My older brother and
I had been sent to bed in disgrace, to wait for father to come home
and administer punishment. I can just recall that we were up in a New
England attic, in the bed at the head of the stairs, surrounded by a
collection of trunks, boxes and old rubbish which a thrifty housewife
always puts “upstairs.” She is too economical to throw them away, and
too neat to have them in sight downstairs. I think the town bell was
faintly ringing, as it always did at six o’clock, and there was a sound
like a gentle tapping as the water lapped at the wharf in high tide.
I can just dimly remember the sunshine streaming in through the dusty
window as we lay there in bed. The dust danced and floated in it like
a flock of tiny flies. Since then I have read much of history. There
have been many occasions when brave souls have waited for death or an
ominous sentence. These scenes haunt the deaf; we cannot talk and laugh
them away as others do. We must put down our book and go back in memory,
seeking something in our own lives which may even remotely resemble
what we have read. That is part of the penalty which must come with the
silence. I remember reading a powerful description of Louis XVI on the
night before his execution. A well-meaning, easy-going man, he had never
been able to realize the serious side of life until it suddenly peered
in through his window with the hideous face of Revolution. Then, face
to face with death, he rose to that dignity “which doth become a king.”
As I read that passage I put my book down, and, ridiculously enough,
there flashed into my mind the picture of these two little boys waiting
for the coming of father with his stick. We had determined that we would
not cry, no matter how hard he hit us. That was our nearest approach to
“dignity.”
I think that even then my hearing was a little defective. I heard my
father come in below, and mother’s clear voice was certainly intended
for our hearing.
“Now, Joseph, you go right up and whip those boys! They would not mind
me, and _you must do it_.”
All through my life I have somehow managed to hear the unpleasant
remarks or thorns of life. We deaf usually miss the bouquets. Poor
father! The Civil War was raging, and he had volunteered. My young
people seem to think that the Civil War was a mere skirmish beside the
great World War just ended. Perhaps so, if we count only money and men,
yet our part in this recent conflict was but a plaything in intense
living, in sentiment, and breaking up of family life, as compared with
the war of the sixties. Father was to leave home for the front in less
than a week. He was captain of the local company, and should probably
have been stronger in family discipline. But his heart was tender. He
did not want to whip his boys, and he protested, as many a man has
done. I could not hear what he said, but I knew from the expression on
my brother’s face that he was protesting. Tonight, after these long and
toilsome years have boiled out much of ambition and the desire to know
the great things of life, I wish most keenly that I could have heard
what my father said.
But mother insisted, as good women do, and finally we heard the big man
slowly mounting the stairs. I can see him now as he stood framed in the
doorway with the bright splinter of sunshine bathing him in light; a
tall man with a strong, kindly face and a thick black beard. It is the
only real memory I have of my father, for he did not come back from the
war alive. Long, long years after, I sat at a great banquet next to a
famous Senator, who had seen much of life. I told him that I have only
this memory of my father, but that I had finally found a man who had
served in the same regiment with him, slept in the same tent, who had
known him intimately as a man.
“Now,” I asked, “shall I hunt up that man and have him tell me in his
own way just what kind of a man my father was?”
Quickly the answer came from this hardened old diplomat:
“Keep away from him! Let him alone! Never go near him! Burn his letters
without reading them. You now have an ideal of your father. This man
knows him as just a plain, common man, probably with most of the faults
of humanity. Let him alone! If at your age God has permitted you to
retain an ideal of any human being, keep it pure. Take no chances of
having it blackened!”
I took his advice, and have always been glad that I did so. It has been
my experience that deaf men are able to hold their ideals longer than
those who can hear; probably this is another part of our compensation. I
would advise every man of the silent world to build up a hobby and gain
an ideal. One will serve to keep hand and brain busy, the other helps to
keep the soul clean. I heard one deaf man say that clean ideals mark the
difference between a “grouch” and a gentleman.
My father came slowly to the bed where we lay, tuning his voice as
nearly to a growl as the nerves between the vocal chords and the
heart-strings would permit.
“I’ll attend to your case, young men! I’ll teach you to mind your
mother!”
Then he began to strike the pillow with his hand, growling as before.
“_Now_, will you mind your mother when she speaks to you?”
It was one of those cases of thought suggestion which I have mentioned.
My brother and I understood. No one can prove that father told us to
cry and help him play his part. Like the horses in the pasture, we
understood. We screamed lustily as father spanked the pillow, though we
had fully agreed between us that we would endure it all without a sound.
In fact, we carried out our part so well that mother, listening below to
see that father did not shirk his duty, finally came running upstairs to
defend her brood.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Joseph, to hurt those little
boys so! They did nothing so very bad!” And there was a great loving
time, with mother holding us close and making little crooning sounds as
she swayed back and forth with us. Father stood by, trying to act the
part of stern parent, with indifferent success. And then he carried us
downstairs, a reunited family, where we boys each had a doughnut with
our bread and milk.
That was nearly sixty years ago, and I have been forced to stand up and
take punishment for many sins and omissions. If father had lived, it
is not likely that we would have discussed this little deception, but
it still would have been a beautiful memory. My wife, who was once a
school teacher, strong in discipline, says it was a great mistake on
father’s part. Perhaps I show this in defects of character. He should
have taken a shingle to us, she says. Perhaps so; yet after all these
years (and what test can compare with time?) I am glad he acted as he
did. If I were starting on his long journey, I should be likely to treat
my children in the same way.
I have often been asked if deaf people of middle-age can safely be
entrusted with the bringing up of a little child. That depends—both on
the grown people and the child. Generally speaking, I should not advise
it. Deaf people are likely to be obstinate in their opinions, rather
narrow in thought, and slow to understand that the habits and tendencies
of society grow like a tree. Many of them have made a brilliant success
in certain lines of work, but they are apt to be narrow as a board
outside of their limited range. In rearing a child it is a great
disadvantage not to be able to hear its little whispered confidences;
if the little one has no reliable confidant it will grow up hard and
unsympathetic, or it will go with its confidences to the wrong person. I
know deaf people who regret bitterly that they can only give financial
aid and reasonable example to their children, while they long to enter
into that part of child life which can only be reached through sound.
Looking back over life, I become convinced that my hearing was always
a little dull; probably the trouble started in a case of scarlet fever
when I was a baby, and in those days no one thought of examining or
treating the ears of a child. Also, I think one of my teachers helped to
start me along the road to silence. Those were the days when “corporal
punishment” was not only permitted, but was encouraged. Most of us
were brought up on the “Scriptures and a stick,” and each teacher
seemed to select some special portion of the human anatomy as the most
susceptible part through which to make her authority felt. Some of the
educational methods of those days were effective even if they were
violent. I have had the teacher point a long stick at me and issue the
order:
“Spell incomprehensibility!”
I would stumble on as far as “ability” and then fall down completely. In
these days my children are led gently over the bad place in the road,
but then we took it at a jump. The teacher would lay that long stick
three times over your back, and while the dust was rising from your
jacket would make another demand.
“_Now_ spell it!”
And I must confess that we were then usually able to do so. This
particular teacher chose the ear for her point of attack; she would
steal up behind a whisperer or a loiterer and strike him over the ears
with a large book, like a geography. Or she would upon occasion pull
some special culprit out to the front of the school by the lobe of the
ear. Such things are no longer permitted in the public schools, yet
I frequently see people in sudden anger slap or “box” their children
on the side of the face or on the ears. It is a cruel and degrading
punishment, and, remembering my own experience, I always feel like
striking those who are guilty of it squarely in their own faces with all
my power.
What annoys the deaf man most is the suggestion that he is being used
as the butt for ridicule. We can stand abuse or open attack with more
or less serenity, but it is gall and wormwood to feel that there are
those who can make sport of our serious affliction. I once worked on a
newspaper where one of the editors was absolutely deaf, unable to hear
his own voice. He was a big man, naturally good-natured and reasonably
cheerful. The foreman of the composing-room was a man of medium size,
and a great “bluffer.” Sometimes he would try to impress strangers in
the office by using the big deaf man as a chopping block for courage.
He would get out of sight behind, shake his fist over the poor fellow’s
head and roar out his challenge:
“You big coward; for five cents I’d lift you out of that chair and mop
up the floor with you. Step out in the street and I’ll knock your block
off!”
It was very cheap stuff, though quite effective. The deaf man, of
course, didn’t hear a word of it, but kept on with his work, and many
visitors considered the foreman courageous for calling down a much
larger man. But one day the editor chanced to see the reflection of that
fist in his glasses. He looked up suddenly and caught the foreman right
in the act. The deaf think quickly and accurately in a crisis, and in
an instant this man was on his feet, pulling off his coat. He did not
know what it was all about, but here was a man taking advantage of his
affliction. There is something more than impressive about the wrath of
the deaf, and the foreman ran behind a table, took a piece of paper and
wrote the following:
“I cannot fight. I promised a Christian mother that I would never strike
a cripple, or a deaf or a blind man!”
The deaf man read the communication and made but one remark:
“I am under no such obligation!”
The way he polished off his tormentor was a joy to us all. He could not
hear the foreman yell “Enough!” and we did not notify him until the job
was perfectly done.
However, the deaf man will be wise if he keeps out of quarrels. When
they arise suddenly he cannot tell which side he ought to be on. I have
taken part vigorously in several sudden and violent battles only to find
when it was all over that I had been doing valiant work—on the wrong
side! Likewise, “bluffing” is taboo. Few men can ever escape with even
the wreckage of a “bluff” unless it is safely mounted on skids of sound.
We all learn these things by hard experience before we discover the
limitations of the silent life.
Some years ago I attended a banquet where a great company of lions
appeared to have gathered to feed and to listen to a few roars after
the meal. The man next to me would have made a splendid “announcer”
for a circus. Here, he told me, was a famous statesman; that man over
there might have been President; this man had enough money to buy a
European state; the man helping himself to a double portion of terrapin
was a poet; the big man nibbling his bit of cheese was a well-known
historian. He was a man of great ability, though unfortunately somewhat
deaf, which fact naturally interested me so much that I kept an eye on
the historian.
When the toastmaster began his “We have with us tonight,” it seemed as
though every speaker felt that he carried a ticket to a front seat in
the Hall of Fame, and in an evil hour I decided to attempt a little
“bluff.” I rose for a few remarks on agriculture. Pedigree or good
stock is essential to good farming, so it was easy to refer to “my
ancestor, Lord Collingwood.” I had read somewhere that Lord Collingwood
was present at the Battle of Bunker Hill as a petty officer on one of
the English warships. It was quite easy to refer to the fact that I had
one ancestor in that battle wearing a red coat and another behind the
American breastworks wearing overalls! What would have happened to me if
both had been killed? It was what we call very cheap stuff—too cheap
for a deaf man to handle. It was a very silly thing to do, but for the
moment it seemed to impress the audience. Out of the corner of my eye I
saw the historian with his hand at his ear whisper to his companion and
then make notes on a sheet of paper.
“Ah,” I thought with gratification, “I have impressed the great
historian!” And I sat down thinking very well of myself. But the eminent
historian folded his paper and sent it to me by a waiter. This is what I
read:
“_Are you sure of your pedigree? The facts seem to be that Lord
Collingwood had only two children, both daughters. I think neither of
them ever married._”
Then and there I lost interest in my ancestors. I have no further desire
to trace back my pedigree, especially in the presence of well-read
historians. And I am cured of “bluffing.”