Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

Or the orange—be not shaken

In the job you’ve undertaken.

Call for apple! Call for apple!

With the problem closely grapple.

Some commercial travelers took it up, and soon nearly every restaurant in the country began providing baked apple. There was one result which we did not anticipate. The finer apples do not “stand up” well on baking; they are delicious, but they flatten to a jelly. The public demands something that stands up like an apple in shape. This has created a great demand for the coarse-fleshed fruit of inferior quality, which will stand up well in the pan.

We came upon another good office of the apple in this campaign. It is an ideal toothbrush. We found that the bacteria which cause pyorrhea are weakened by the mild acid, thus a wash of vinegar and water is an excellent remedy. This has been verified by dentists, and a mellow, sour apple eaten raw is likewise helpful. Using a sour apple as a toothbrush ought to be a popular method of scrubbing the teeth.

I have perhaps spent unnecessary time over these matters, but in my study of men who live in the silent world I have found a number who consider the deaf man justified in finding solace in drink. It is a most foolish prescription, but I fear the practice is all too common. The deaf are subject to periods of deep depression, and the argument is that the moderate use of alcohol will brighten their lives. I can think of nothing more pitiful or ridiculous than an intoxicated deaf man. Alcohol is the worst possible companion for the silence. There, if anywhere, the faithless and deceitful comrades of life lead only to darkness and misery. The deaf man needs every moral brace that life can give him; no other character who tries to find a place and to adjust himself to his fellow-men has greater need of the discipline which self-denial alone can give. Only the finer and more substantial hopes are worth considering when music no longer greets us and well-loved voices fade away or lose all their tenderness, when they become harsh and discordant sounds. Bottled sunshine, taken from coal or the electric wire, may be a fair substitute for daylight, but bottled happiness will finally bring nothing but misery to the deaf.

And yet you never can tell how people will size you up. There was a deaf man who became greatly interested in prohibition. He could not even drink coffee as a stimulant. He was to be chairman of the State prohibition convention, and so started on a night train for the meeting. Just before retiring he read over his speech, and then crawled into his berth very well satisfied with himself. About midnight he was awakened by a heavy hand on his shoulder. You must remember that it is a great shock for the deaf to be rudely started from sleep in this way; it is then impossible for them to grasp any new situation quickly. In the dim light of the Pullman our deaf man saw the figure of a man who was fumbling about in his suitcase. When he saw that he had awakened the sleeper, this intruder left the case, opened the curtains and held out his hand with some object presented straight at the deaf man’s head. As he was evidently asking some question, the deaf man imagined that he was a train robber presenting a pistol with a “Hands up,” “Money or your life,” or some such appropriate remark. The prohibition orator thrust up his hands and said:

“I’m deaf. Take it all!”

The “train robber” talked for a while and then lowered his hand, took the deaf man by the arm and led him to the smoking-room. There the “robber” turned out to be the colored porter, with no pistol, but a glass bottle in his hand. Finally, he slowly and laboriously wrote out the following: