Since then several famous aurists have peered into my nose and ears; they told me the truth, and charged more than this doctor did for his wild guess.
Later I shall describe some of the local treatments to which my poor ears have been subjected. It would make a volume in itself were I to tell all, and it would record the experience of most country people who go down the silent road. Frequently the city man may obtain expert advice from aurists who fully understand that they are dealing with an interior nerve or brain disease. Most of us who were “brought up” in the country fell into the hands of physicians who appeared to think deafness is what they call a “mechanical disease,” much like the sprain of the knee or wrist. That country doctor saw only the wax on the ear drum, when the real trouble was far inside. So we are blistered and oiled and irrigated—and the real seat of the trouble is not reached. Of course I should have found some one competent to treat my case. That is easily said, but the great majority of young men in my day were without capital, quite incapable of taking advice, and they labored under the conviction that any public admission of serious disease would be considered a weakness that was like a stigma.
I have been singularly unsuccessful in obtaining original impressions from deaf people in trying to learn from them just what were their sensations when it became evident, past all argument, that they were to walk softly through ever-increasing silence. It would seem that they rarely have great imagination; perhaps silence, and a lack of the stimulant of sound, destroys that faculty. Psychology estimates that of all the senses hearing has the greatest influence over the emotions and the morals. I fancy that the violent effort to readjust life habits to a new existence bewilders most of us, so that the mind is incapable of working in exactly the old way. Apparently many of the deaf fall into a morbid, hopelessly despondent frame of mind, which does not permit any reasonable and useful research into the habits and landmarks which characterize a strange country. I know how useless it is to tell the ordinary deaf man that it is a rare privilege to know and to study the ideas which special messengers bring to us in the silent world. I know that what I tell him is true, yet I am forced to agree with him when he says that he would give it all for the privilege of hearing a hand-organ playing on a street corner. Still, it is a part of the game for us to believe that in many ways the deaf are the favored of the Lord.
As far as my own experience goes, I know that I went about for some time in a daze. In spite of the verdict of the country doctor I realized that my hearing was surely failing, and I remember that I began to take stock of my mental and physical assets for the great game of life that was opening up before me. When a man does that fairly he will realize how industry and skill are changing all lines of life. When I was a boy playing ball we always put the poorest, most awkward player in right field. That was the jumping-off place in baseball. As the game is now played right field offers opportunity for the best player of the nine. After standing off and looking at myself fairly I was forced to conclude that I was not fitted to enter the silent world with any great hope of making more than the most ordinary living there. Try it yourself. Cast up your personal account, giving a fair valuation to the things you can do really well, and then tell me what sort of a living you could make for your family if tomorrow you found yourself totally blind or totally deaf. Like many young men I had received no special training for any life enterprise; I knew no trade and had no particular “knack” at tools or machinery. I had attended a country school and one term of high school, but had never been taught the true foundation principles of any of my subjects. I had read many books without direction or good judgment, with no definite end in view. The sum total of my life assets seemed to be that I was an expert milker and could take care of cattle; the most promising position for me that of a rather inferior hired man. Thousands of men have gone through life with a poorer outfit, but they have had, in addition, the boon of perfect hearing; how great an advantage this is no one can know until he must face the world without it.
Every healthy young man looks forward to the time when he may build four strong walls about his life. These walls are home, wife, a piece of land and power. In the flush of youth we feel that if we build this square and live inside we may laugh at adversity and say in our hearts, “The world is mine!” But this becomes a troubled dream when one comes to understand that he must crawl through life crippled—with one great faculty on crutches.
It is rather curious how at such a time the mind grasps at meanings hardly considered before, and makes new and rapid applications from things which formerly seemed of no consequence. I remember picking up at this time a school reader which one of the children was studying. My eye fell on the old familiar poem—how many of us have performed a parrot-like recitation of it in the little old schoolhouse!
“Oh, solitude! where are the charms
Which sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.