ADVENTURES IN SILENCE
CHAPTER I
Terrors That Are Imaginary
The World of Silence Uncharted—Two Initial Incidents, Darkness in the Tunnel, and at Home—Imaginary Terrors of the Deaf—When John Harlow Thought He Was a Murderer.
For some years I have considered writing a book concerning the life of the deaf or the “hard of hearing.” It is hard to understand why our peculiar and interesting life in the silent world has not been more fully recorded. We read of adventures in strange lands, far away, yet here is a stranger country close by, with its mysteries and miseries uncharted. Having lived in this silent world for some years, I have often planned to make an effort to describe it. However, like many other writers, I could not get going. I was not able to start my story until two rather unusual incidents spurred me into action.
Those of you who know industrial New York understand how the vast army of commuters is rushed to the city each day and rushed home again at night. From New Jersey alone a crowd of men and women larger by far than the entire population of the State of Vermont is carried to the banks of the Hudson from a territory sixty miles in diameter. Once at the river bank there are two ways by which these commuters may reach the city. They may float over in the great ferryboats, or they may dive under the river in rapid trains driven through a tube far below the water. This submarine travel is the quicker and more popular way, and during the rush hours the great tunnel makes one think of a mighty tube of vaseline or tooth paste with a giant hand squeezing a thick stream of humanity out of the end.
I reach the Hudson over the Erie Railroad. At this point the underground tube makes a wide curve inland, and in order to get to the trains we must walk through a long concrete cave far underground. The other morning several trains arrived at the Erie station together, and their passengers were all dumped into this cave like grain poured into a long sack. There was a solid mass of humanity slowly making its way to the end. The city worker naturally adapts himself to a crowd. He at once becomes an organized part of it. Take a thousand countrymen, each from the wide elbow room of his farm, and throw them together in a mass and they would trample each other in a panic. The city crowd, as long as it can be kept good-natured, will march on in orderly fashion; but let it once be overcome by fear, and it will be more uncontrolled than the throngs of countrymen.
This cave is brilliantly lighted, and we were moving on in orderly procession, without thought of danger. We would move forward perhaps 50 feet and then halt for a moment—to move ahead once more. During one of these halts I looked about me. At my right was a group of giggling girls; at my left a white-faced, nervous man; behind, a lame man, and in front two great giants in blouse and overalls. I was close by the change booth. A slight, pale-faced young woman sat within; the piles of money in front of her. A husky, rough-looking man was offering a bill to be changed. I saw it all, and as I looked, in an instant the lights flashed out and left us in inky darkness.