The story of my house

by George H. Ellwanger

At times the small black fly upon the pane

May seem the black ox of the distant plain.

How deceptive is sound! The leaf-cricket’s chant on hot summer nights seems to proceed from the lawn, rods away; he is singing in the honeysuckle vine a few feet overhead. Not unfrequently, when sitting within doors, am I obliged to consider whether the monotonous humming I hear is the planing-mill far remote or the purring of the cat—my pet Maltese, who looks at me with her beryl-like eyes and arches her back to be stroked. But though she pricks up her ears when I scratch the under surface of the table, she does not long mistake the counterfeit for the wainscot mouse.

Little sounds, like the petty annoyances of life, are frequently the most unpleasant. A great annoyance one meets forcibly, knowing it to be a necessary evil that must be put out of the way. The snake is killed or evaded; the fly remains to harass. The roaring of the gale, the downpour from the sky—sounds loud and violent—are soothing rather than the reverse; the rattling of a window-blind is far more annoying. Who but the man that is filing it can hear without a shudder the filing of a saw, and who but the katydid himself can passively endure the katydid’s stridulation?

A monotonous sound, providing it be not a rasping sound, the ear becomes accustomed to, and misses when it ceases. The ticking of a clock, in itself unmusical, is, nevertheless, soothing; you awaken when it suddenly stops. The nocturnal cricket’s reiterated cry is a somnolent sound—a voice of the darkness and the dew. The grasshoppers’ jubilant chorus sings away the fleeting summer hour, and by its rising and falling pulsation marks the waxing and waning of the year. Even when immelodious, most sounds of external Nature are not irritating. The rattling of the window-pane exasperates—one intuitively anathematizes the carpenter; the angry creaking of the boughs has a meaning, and one accepts it as a fitting and necessary accompaniment of the gale. The harsh barking of a dog rouses one from slumber; it is plainly in most cases an annoyance which has no just reason for existence—the neighborhood were better off without it.

The railroad whistles, scarcely farther removed and far more plainly heard, are not annoying. At once they are accepted by the mind as possessing a reason. For behind the whistle are the vast driving-wheels, the passengers, the mails, and the merchandise. When I hear the locomotive’s whistle I feel the locomotive’s power, and the significance of its strength. It is the voice of might and speed; the exultant neigh of the great iron charger. It sounds the hours for me. Day after day—night, morning, and afternoon—with the same exactitude, scarcely a minute after the engineer has opened the sounding-valve, do the cars, arriving and departing, pass along the opposite shore of the river. Far off among the distant valleys resounds the clatter of the oncoming train; now lost for a moment, now more distinctly heard. A mile and a half away on the still night air the whistle sounds, and the awakened echoes respond. I hear the roar through the gap of the hills, the crash across the bridge, the reverberating flight along the bank, the gradual receding and absorption of the sound. Nightly, expectantly, I listen for it, and miss it when the train is late.

How much does not the arrival of the night express signify! how much of pain or pleasure to those it bears! Friends who have parted, and friends who are waiting; news sad and joyous; regrets and hopes; hatred and love; laughter and tears; all the emotions and passions harbored in human hearts are present in the rapid flight of the train. The engineer at the throttle, the fireman who supplies the fuel—calm, watchful, serene at their posts amid the deafening roar and jar—I think of them when the whistle sounds, plunging onward through the darkness and the storm.

What a fascination exists in the flight of a train—an exhilaration to those on board, an ever-recurring marvel to those who witness it pass by! A speck in the distance, it momentarily enlarges till, thundering past, it instantly recedes, as swiftly lost as it was swift to appear. Onward it flies, annihilating space, outspeeding time, flinging the mile-posts behind, bearing its burden to remote destinations. A moment it pauses to slake its thirst, or to deposit a portion of its burden, replacing it with fresh freight in waiting. Still onward it flies, linking villages and towns, spanning streams, connecting valleys, tunneling hills, joining States. Ever the crash and the roar, the great trail of smoke and steam, the engineer at the throttle—calm, watchful, serene—plunging through the darkness and the storm! This the whistle means for me.

Instantly I detect the whistles of the different roads, some more musical, some more acute, some deeper, more sonorous in tone. Varying in resonance according to the state of the atmosphere, they apprise me of the temperature without, like the audible vibration of the rails themselves when passed over by the cars. Clear and musical in the early summer mornings, during cold weather they are more sibilant and piercing. They are a weather-vane to the ear, blown by heat or cold, responsive to the moisture or the dryness of the air. I observe similar acoustic effects in the tones of the distant bells. So that I may often prognosticate the weather as surely by external sounds as by the shifting barometer of the hills.

Even through my windows I like to analyze the sentiment of animate sounds. “The nature of Sounds in general,” remarks the author of Sylva Sylvarum, “hath been imperfectly observed; it is one of the subtellest Peeces of Nature.” During a ramble through the woods and fields I am impressed by the various emotions conveyed by bird voices alone. Through them the woods and fields acquire an added meaning; they are the interpreters of Nature. Thus, the voice of the jay is a signal to inform his companions of danger; the scream of the hawk, a note of menace to intimidate his prey and cause it to reveal its whereabouts. The woodpecker’s tap is a sound of industry. The mourning-dove’s notes express sorrow; the hermit-thrush’s, ecstasy; the veery’s, solitude; the white-throated sparrow’s, content. The voices of the bluebird and song-sparrow are sounds of welcome, an exordium of spring. The plaintive whistle of the wood-pewee, the liquid warble of the purple finch, and the refrain of many a companion songster, it would require the fine ear and fancy of the poet to interpret aright. Perhaps Frederick Tennyson well defines the sentiment they express in his melodious rendering of the blackbird’s song: