“Man in lower four sick. Has got to have brandy. Says you look like a sport and probably have it on you. Can you fill this bottle?”
They had taken our prohibition friend for the other sort of a “rum-punisher.” Such cases of mistaken identity are quite common to the deaf, and some of them are never fully untangled.
Once when I entered a crowded dining-room in New York City a young woman jumped up from a table and greeted me with every evidence of affection. I had never seen her before, and was greatly embarrassed, especially as I could not hear a word she said. I tried to explain, but she continued talking rapidly, holding me by the arm. Of all the people present, no one thought of coming to my aid except the colored waiter. He was the good Samaritan who talked to the lady and wrote out her story for me on the back of his order card. She thought I was her Uncle George, who had agreed to meet her there. She insisted that I was playing a practical joke in pretending that I was only a plain and somewhat bewildered deaf man. Finally she obtained a side view of my face which convinced her of her mistake, and then, greatly startled by the publicity she had caused, she hurried away. To this day I do not know who “Uncle George” was or if he ever found his niece. My colored interpreter, however, is still on duty, and frequently writes out for me the conversations of people near by.
CHAPTER VI
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: