Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

They felt that Vicksburg would understand this trade language, so they started him off with the money. The Indian made straight for Vicksburg through swamps and woods and across streams, ever repeating the mysterious message. On the last lap of his journey he fell and struck his head on a log with such force that he lay unconscious for a time. Finally he recovered, shook his scattered wits together and went on repeating the message. But it had been affected by the fall. Subjective audition may even have been responsible, but, at any rate, when he finally scrambled into the store at Vicksburg and presented his money, he called for:

“Something sweet and something to drink.”

The merchant was well posted in this metaphor, so he fitted the Indian out with a jug of whiskey and five pounds of brown sugar. A day or two later the red man walked proudly into the printing office with this roller material. The printers were given to philosophy, and, being unable to make the ink roller, they proceeded to make a company of high rollers, in which task they were ably assisted by the faithful messenger. During the carouse a company of Grierson’s Union cavalry rode into town. All trades were represented in the Union army, and a couple of Northern printers used the printing outfit to good advantage. When the owners woke up they were put to work printing one of Lincoln’s proclamations.

By insisting upon written communications we deaf lose much of the skim-milk of conversation, but we come to be expert in estimating the ability of our friends to express themselves in clear and simple English. Try it on a few of your visitors. You will be astonished to see how many well-educated men will fail at the simple test of writing what they have to say quickly and tersely on paper. They flounder like schoolboys. My observation, as I look out from the silent world, is that with many humans talking becomes a sort of mechanical operation, usually involving no particular thought. It takes brains to put words on paper; and, again, the written word is actual evidence. A man speaking to you, and writing to me, would probably give me the stronger and more reliable account—and work harder while doing it. I know a very pompous, dignified gentleman of the old school who would probably say to you:

“The fateful hands upon the clock registered midnight’s doleful hour before my head sought my pillow.”

Or, “The emotions generated by that pathetic occasion had such a profound effect upon me that I fell into a lachrymose condition.”

If I handed him my pencil and pad he would get down to:

“I went to bed at twelve. I wept.”

Another bar to wordy discussions on paper is the fact that many well-informed people are not sure of their spelling. In this modern age too many business men depend upon their clerks and stenographers to see to such trifles as spelling and grammar; their own knowledge of the mechanics of expression grows dusty. One reason for the decline of the Roman Empire was that the soldiers became too lazy to carry their own weapons. They left them to slaves, and the slaves practiced with the implements of war until they became so expert that they overcame the masters. I think of this sometimes when a man who has nearly lost the art of writing through this transfer of the medium of expression from the hand to the mouth tries to communicate with me. Once I received a scathing reply to an excuse I made to a correspondent—that a sore throat had made it difficult for me to dictate letters. He acidly inquired how long it had been since people wrote letters with the throat.

Ignorant men who write little usually make the meaning evident, though the form cannot be called graceful. One night a drunken man drove into my yard by mistake. It was pitch dark, and I happened to be alone on the farm. His horses, eager for harbor, had turned into our road. I went without a lantern (the family had taken it on their trip) to turn his horses about and start them down the highway. Then he became possessed with a strong desire to tell me all his troubles. Of course, as I could not hear them, I made no reply, and my silence so enraged him that he wanted to fight. He clambered down from the wagon and groped about in the darkness to reach me. At last I made him understand that I could not hear, whereupon he was seized with a great grief for my trouble, and insisted on writing out his sentiments for me. There was no denying him, so off at one side of the buildings I started a little blaze of straw, and by its light he scrawled on a piece of writing paper with a blunt pencil. By the same flickering light I deciphered this: