SILENCE NOT ALWAYS GOLDEN
Looking Wise and Saying Nothing—Passing Encouragement
Around—The Critic and the Short Skirts—The “Lion” and
the Honest Deaf Man—How Reputation and the Deaf Man
Overtook the Hon. Robt. Grey—The Simultaneous Blessings
at the Dinner-table—Jealousy and Mrs. Brewster.
It has been said of a Cape Cod man that if he will tell where he comes
from, _look wise_ and say nothing, he will pass as a person of fine
intellect. Much the same is true of the deaf man. He is too apt to talk
all the time, or else to say nothing—and sometimes he does both at
once. Many of us betray the shoals of our mind and our shallow waters of
thought by talking too much. The Yankee is naturally inquisitive. He has
injured his position in history by asking too many useless questions.
Unfortunately, this is also the failing of too many of the deaf. Instead
of realizing that the choicest bits of conversation are reserved for
them, they persist in trying to borrow the dross. Cardinal Wolsey’s
outburst of bitter self-reproach would be a valuable memory gem for us:
“I charge thee, fling away ambition.
By that crime fell the angels.”
Here we must part with the foolish ambition to deal in small talk. The
surest way for us to become social nuisances is constantly to demand the
details of current conversation, and some of our worst embarrassments
come when some well-meaning, loud-voiced person diligently relays to us
the trivial remarks. For be it known that the bubbles of words which
work up from the feeble fermenting of shallow thoughts are usually stale
and unprofitable. And many a deaf person has passed an hour of agony in
company smiling and pretending to enjoy conversation which might as well
be carried on in Europe, as far as his understanding goes. A student of
lip-reading can find much amusing practice in such situations, but it
is far better for the rest of us to say frankly that we cannot hear the
talk, and then retire from the field with a book.
Every deaf person who possesses even a trace of humor can tell how
he or she has passed as an important personage by looking wise and
saying nothing. On several occasions I have played the part of
intelligent critic with some success. I can sit on the front seat at
a lecture or a concert, look intently at the speaker or singer, smile
and frown at the right places in the program, and make an effort to
look wise. The performer soon comes to think that he has at least one
very keen and appreciative listener, and soon he aims the best points
at me. Of course, we all know how the heart and spirit glow in the
face of evident appreciation. I do not hear a sound, but I present
the appearance of the mighty rock in the weary land of inattentive
listeners. I have even had the susceptible artist hunt me out
afterwards, evidently seeking some delicate compliment—for who is proof
against such desires? However, I keep out of the way, for it would never
do for him to find that the appreciative hearer is a deaf man. A friend
of mine, working on the same principle of passing encouragement around,
keeps an eye open for deaf men or those who seem discouraged, and when
he meets some one who seems to be losing his grip, he gives a military
salute. When his children criticise such a performance, he says:
“Why not? It makes him feel good. It inoculates his pride. He goes on
his way thinking that perhaps after all he may be somebody, since that
‘distinguished-looking man’ recognized him!”
There is a sorry old joke that I have played repeatedly on vain or
inquisitive people. I worked it off on my friend, Brown, three times
running. Brown is the type of fellow who is much in love with his own
voice. They tell me that he can deliver a fair speech, but that he
spoils the effect by making it quite evident that he is casting pearls,
and that lack of proper appreciation classes the audience with a
well-known suggestion of the New Testament. I have never heard Brown’s
words, but his actions speak loudly to a deaf man. So I wait until he
begins to describe some oratorical triumph and then start on him.
“Great! I know a man down town who would gladly pay five hundred dollars
to hear you speak. Thus far he has not been able to hear you.”
Brown absorbs the compliment with the air of a man well accustomed to
such little tributes. But I know how his mind is working, and, sure
enough, soon he rises to the bait.
“By the way, what did you say about that man who is anxious to hear me
speak?”
“I said that there is a very intelligent man down town who says he would
give five hundred dollars to hear you speak. Thus far he has been denied
that privilege, but I think he means what he says.”
“That’s good! No doubt some one who has heard me has told him about it.
I expect to speak at a banquet next week. Perhaps we could have this man
invited. I should be glad to give him pleasure.”
“It certainly would give him great pleasure. I am sure he would travel
far to get within sound of your voice.”
“By the way, I do not recall that you mentioned the name of this
gentleman.”
“_He is a deaf man. He has not heard a sound for years! I know he would
give five hundred dollars to be able to hear you._”
And then Brown refuses to speak to me for a month. He has no use for
these “funny men.” His vanity finally gets the best of him, however,
and a little later he “falls” for the same story with variations. You
can tell him of the man who would willingly give a thousand dollars
to see the great orator. Of course, he is blind. Then there is the
enthusiastic citizen who would gladly run a mile in order to join the
audience. He is a cripple with only one leg. Of course, these are
worn, old jokes, but the deaf man may be pardoned for indulging in the
old-timers if they help to offset some of his own blunders and mishaps.
Let it be known, however, that we deaf never shine as critics where our
opinions will have weight. Some men, naturally strong and dominant,
reach high positions, where they have power over others, and they become
hard taskmasters because through their inability to hear they make too
many snap judgments and become too critical. They may be efficient, but
frequently it is a raw and brutal efficiency which accomplishes little
good. One very deaf man was invited to a meeting of a literary society
in a Western town. It seemed to be the only entertainment in town that
night, and though it was obviously no place for a deaf man, he went
along with his friends. We know how to amuse ourselves at such places.
We may not hear a word, but the mind can be kept active with some detail
of business, or a review or something we have read. This man applauded
and smiled with the rest. It is often a foolish performance, but we
invariably fall into it. By assuming a serious expression of countenance
whenever it was apparent that the program called for thought, this
man found himself being accepted as a wise critic. One young woman
was determined to attract the attention of the distinguished-looking
stranger. She read her essay with one eye on him, and he did his best to
look appreciative. When the literary exercises were over the chairman
called various leading citizens to discuss the meeting and criticise
the various performances. The young woman was anxious to hear a word
of praise from the visitor. So, at her suggestion, the president wrote
a note and passed it to the deaf man—a note suggesting that he give a
truthful criticism of at least one number. This fishing for compliments
is like other forms of angling; you never know what you are going to
catch. My friend protested and tried to explain, but there was no
escape. Being a man of some determination, and, moreover, with severe
old-fashioned ideas, he stood up and delivered his criticism:
“My friends, I am no critic. Nature has made it necessary for me to
hear with my eyes, and I can offer but one suggestion. I may be wrong.
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but it seems to me that if I had to walk
through life on such a pair of pipestems as I have seen tonight, they
would be the last thing in the world that I would take pride in
exhibiting. I’d wear a dress that would sweep the floor.”
The company reserved their laughter until they were safe at home, but
with one accord everyone glanced at the short skirt of the literary
young woman. It is safe to say that she never again suggested an unknown
deaf man as critic of her literary efforts.
Sometimes the deaf go fishing for compliments themselves, with very
disastrous results. We may wisely conclude that few bouquets will be
thrown in our direction. Even those which reach us may contain some
kind of hook concealed amid the flowers. Yet there was Henry Bascom,
very deaf, very vain, and filled with the almost criminal idea that he
could write poetry. He refused to work at his trade, for he felt that
his muse did not care to brush her skirts against overalls or working
clothes. His brother-in-law, a blunt, outspoken man, was growing weary
of “feeding lazy poets.” Once he roared out a protest, but Henry did
not get it straight, and hoped it was some sort of compliment. So he
insisted that his sister repeat it. But she hesitated. Finally she
temporized:
“George merely said something about the great need of energy in the
world.”
Of course, Henry should have known that there was explosive material
hidden in all this, but he only decided that something fine was being
kept away from him. So when George came home he began again:
“George, I was much interested in what you said this morning. Won’t you
repeat it so that I can have it exact?”
And George very willingly complied. He wrote the message carefully in
ink:
“_I told Mary that if you belonged to me I would make you work even if
you bust a gut!_”
Investigation will destroy illusion nine times out of ten. If you think
your friends are saying nice things about you, let it go at that. Take
my advice and let analysis of such doubtful remarks alone. Eight times
out of ten, for the deaf, it will lead to an explosion.
And there was the deaf man who went to the reception with his wife and
daughter. Some remarkable literary lion had come to town, and the elite
had turned out to see him feed and hear him roar, if he could be induced
to perform. The deaf man, at his distance, watched the lion carefully
and felt that here was a kindred spirit. For back of the stereotyped
smile and the smug mask of conventionality there was another person, a
real human being, who had grown weary of the foolishness, and was eager
to get back into the wilderness, where outsiders, like the deaf and the
uncelebrated, may have their fling.
But the women continued to parade themselves and their ideas before the
celebrity with an ostentation that was quite enough to rouse the ire of
a sensible dweller in the silence. This man held in as long as he could,
and then remarked to his wife in what he thought was a whisper:
“Those silly girls make me very tired.”
The entire company heard him, and the wife and daughter were deeply
mortified. They did manage to cut off the rest of his remarks, and
finally, exceedingly conscious that he had made a bad blunder, the deaf
man retreated to the porch to look at the stars. They are old friends
who never find fault when one stumbles over some woman-made rule of
society. And there came the lion, broken away temporarily from his
keepers, fumigating with a cigar some of the thoughts which his admirers
had aroused. He went straight to the deaf man and held out his hand.
“My friend, you are the only honest man in this house. The _rest_ of us
are tired, but we lack the courage to admit it in public. How do you
come to be so brave?”
Another deaf man went back to his old town after fifteen years’ absence.
They were about to hold a political convention to nominate a candidate
for Congress. The Hon. Robert Grey controlled most of the delegates.
No one in particular was enthusiastic about the Hon. Robert excepting
himself and his close friends, yet no one could quite summon the courage
to tell the truth about him. The deaf man arrived, and saw a large,
black-haired man dominating the stage.
“Why,” he said, in what he intended to be a subdued tone, “there is Bob
Gray. He’s the man who stole the town funds while he was treasurer.
What’s he doing here? He should be in jail!”
He had not gauged his voice correctly, and half the people in the hall
heard him. It was just what the rest had lacked the courage to say. The
deaf man, with his simplicity and directness, had penetrated into the
hiding place of the big issue of the campaign. His remark changed the
entire spirit of the convention, and the Hon. Robert Grey was left at
home.
The deaf man is often laughed at for his blunders, but, unwittingly,
he has pricked many a bubble and exposed many a fraud through his
blunderings. Take the case of the young man who fancied the minister’s
daughter and went to church with her. The congregation was small,
and the collections were generally in line with the congregation.
The collector was a deaf man, a faithful attendant, who, as he said,
could not even hear the money drop into the box. Our young man took a
five-dollar gold piece out of his pocket and held it up so that the
minister’s daughter could see it and observe his great liberality. She
protested in a whisper:
“Oh, that’s too much! I wouldn’t give that amount.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. My usual habit is to give ten dollars, but I don’t
happen to have such a coin with me today.”
So the bluffer waved her away, and really would have been able to
“get away with it” had it not been for the deaf man. When the box was
presented the young man deftly palmed his gold piece and dropped a penny
into the box. The organist played on through the offertory, and the deaf
man marched up the aisle with his contributions. The minister had tried
to tell him several times that it was not in good taste to report the
size of the contributions publicly, but the deaf man was a zealous soul,
and did not quite understand, so he carefully counted the amount found
in the box, and, just before the last hymn, he stood up in front of the
pulpit.
“My friends, I want to announce that the contributions for the day
amount to $3.27. ‘The Lord loveth a cheerful giver.’”
And the minister’s daughter, being rather good at mental arithmetic,
glanced at the young man, and fully understood.
Dr. A. W. Jackson tells a story which all deaf men will appreciate. He
was invited to preach the sermon in a country church, and after the
service he was taken for dinner to Deacon Bentley’s house. There was a
great family gathering, and the long table was spread in the kitchen.
The deacon sat at one end, the minister at the other. Naturally, the
minister expected to be asked to say the “grace,” so he prepared his
mind for it. We deaf demand a “sign” for such invitations, and Dr.
Jackson thought he had one when the deacon, far down the room, seemed
to nod his head as at a suggestion. So the preacher shut his eyes, bent
down his head and blessed the food with a long and fervent prayer. He
knew something was wrong, for he felt the table shaking, but he went
serenely on until he finished with a devout “amen.” How are we to
know what really happens at such times until we get home, where our
faithful reporter can tell us about it? Dr. Jackson did not in the
least understand until his wife explained that Deacon Bentley had not
given the expected sign, and, being deaf himself, he had bowed his own
head and said a rival blessing. Probably the spectacle of the two deaf
men offering simultaneous petitions blessed all who were present with
abundant appetite.
This was indeed ridiculous, but, no doubt, you have seen normal men
acting in much the same way, foolishly interfering with the jobs or
prerogatives of others when they know full well they have no business
out of their own corners. It is like the group of men I saw at a
country railway station trying to turn a locomotive on an old-fashioned
turntable. The engineer had run his machine on to the table, and though
the men were pushing on the lever with all their might, they could not
move the engine. Finally the engineer backed her about two feet. The
weight was then so nicely adjusted that a single man turned the table
with ease. At first there had been a poor adjustment. The men were
trying to lift the entire weight; when it became nicely balanced the
engine nearly turned itself. I think most men at some period of their
lives get out of their own corners to show others how the job of life
should be worked out. They throw the machinery out of balance and double
the world’s work.
Years ago, when I worked as a hired man in a back-country neighborhood,
I belonged to a debating society. I was on the program committee, and we
found something of a task in selecting subjects for debate which were
within the life and thought of our audience. “Resolved, that the mop is
a more useful element in civilization than the dishcloth” was a prime
favorite with the women. “Resolved, that for a man starting on a farm a
cow is more useful than a woman” brought out great argumentative effort
from the men, and as I recall it, the cow won on the statement that if
crops failed and you could not pay the mortgage, you could sell the cow.
If I were back there now, knowing what I do of life, I should suggest a
new topic: “Resolved, that deafness is a greater affliction to a woman
than to a man.” Here is fine opportunity for argument. The man is shut
out of many lines of bread-winning, while the woman is denied the right
to indulge largely in small talk and gossip.
I think deaf women are more likely than men to be exceedingly jealous.
Mrs. Helen Brewster was deaf, and she made life a burden to her husband,
Frank. He was really one of the most circumspect of men, but if he
stopped for a moment to talk with Miss Kempton, the sixty-year-old
dressmaker, poor Helen was quick to imagine him taking advantage of her
affliction to exchange nonsense with the other ladies. And right here
let me say to the deaf and the near-deaf: force yourselves to believe
that your friends, and particularly the members of your family, are
absolutely true; do not ever permit your mind to suggest that those
upon whom you must rely for help or interpretation are unfaithful.
Never admit this until you cannot escape the conviction. Remember
that most persons we meet are kindly and well disposed, if selfish
and thoughtless. They are not plotting our destruction or even our
unhappiness. It is too easy for the deaf to turn life into a veritable
hell by permitting the hideous devils of depression to master the brain.
Now, Helen Brewster was jealous without reason, and perhaps the
unreasonable phase of that disease runs its most violent course. The
Brewsters lived on the ground floor of an old-fashioned town house. In
the family living on the upper floor was a daughter, Mary Crimmins, who
caused Helen’s worst paroxysms. In Winter, after an unusually hard
storm, the old roof was endangered by its load of snow. Mary Crimmins
called from her window to Frank as the only man then in the house to
mount the roof and shovel away the snow. And Helen, washing dinner
dishes at the sink, saw the two talking, Frank looking up and smiling,
and immediately concluded that the topic was much warmer than snow.
Frank got a ladder and a shovel, and mounted to the roof, while poor
Helen sat in the sitting-room bathing her soul in misery, for while
men do not usually present a ladder when planning an elopement in
broad daylight, all things were possible to her distorted mind. Soon
there came a small avalanche of snow from the roof, but the distracted
deaf woman did not hear it. Then her son came rushing into the room,
screaming with such breath as was left in him:
“Oh, ma! It’s terrible!”
“What’s the matter?”
“The snow all slipped and knocked the ladder down, and pa—”
“What about pa?”
“He’s up there hugging—”
Johnnie really finished his sentence, but the words “pa” and “hugging”
were enough for Helen.
“He is, is he? I’ll attend to him!” And she rushed upstairs and knocked
loudly at the door; then, without waiting for any invitation, she strode
in. Old Mrs. Crimmins sat knitting by the window, while in a corner
behind her sat Mary with a stranger, a fine-looking young man. Before
the irate deaf woman could properly unload her mind, Mary blushing red,
came and screamed in her neighbor’s ear:
“This is my fiance, Henry Jordon. We meant to keep it secret, and you
are the first one I’ve told. I know you won’t repeat it.”
“But where’s Frank?” the astonished Helen at last managed to say.
Johnnie had followed her upstairs, and he was well drilled in handling
the deaf. So he caught hold of his mother’s dress and pulled her to the
door.
“Come and _see_, ma,” he cried.
He led her downstairs, out into the snow and pointed. And there was pa.
The snow had slipped beneath his feet, and carried him to the very edge
of the roof. He had saved himself only by catching at the chimney. There
he stood, with both hands clasped about it, “hugging” literally for dear
life.
It was a very silent and thoughtful deaf woman who raised the ladder
and gave her husband a chance to discontinue his attention to the
chimney. And that is about the way nine-tenths of our imaginary
troubles terminate. It never did pay to hug a rumor or a delusion
too strenuously. Better conserve your strength for something more
substantial.