Adventures in Silence

by Herbert W. Collingwood

We have endured another test in watching the birds. Most of us can remember when the morning was full of bird music. One day as we walk about it comes suddenly home to us that the birds are silent or have disappeared. At least, we can no longer hear them. We look about and notice a robin on the lawn. We see him throw back his head, open his mouth and move his throat. He is evidently singing—but we did not know it. I cannot tell you in ordinary language how a chill suddenly passes over the heart as we realize that as long as life lasts music is to become to us as unsubstantial as the shadow of a cloud passing over the lawn.

The woman I speak of knew by these tests that her hearing was failing. She was a student at college, where quick and sound ears are essential if one is to obtain full benefit from lectures. I know just what this means from my own experience, since I entered college some little time after my ears began to fail. I am frequently asked how it is possible for students with defective hearing to obtain an education. To the ambitious man or woman the first thought on discovering the beginnings of deafness is that the mind must be improved so as to make skilled labor possible. Too many deaf people after a brief struggle feel that fate has denied them the right to an education, and they give up trying in despair. I found several ways of partly overcoming the difficulty. I copied notes made by another student. In every class you will find several natural reporters who make a very clear synopsis of the lectures, and are rather proud of their skill. I found one lazy and brilliant fellow who was an excellent reporter, though he absolutely refused to study. He would give me his report and I would look up the authorities and help him fill in the skeleton. We served each other like the blind and the halt. I also made arrangements with several professors to read their lecture notes. Most of them are quite willing to permit this when they find the deaf man earnest and determined. In fact, the average professor comes to be a dry sawbones of a fact dispenser, whose daily struggle is to cram these facts into the more or less unwilling student brain. When an interested deaf man appears, actually eager to read the lectures, the soul of the driest professor will expand, for here, he thinks, is full evidence of appreciation. The world and the units which comprise it have always admired determination, or what plain people call “grit.” I think it has been given that name because it is that substance which the fighter may throw into the works of the machine which would otherwise roll over him.

Working thus, I came to know something of the inner life of these professors, whose daily routine comes to be a struggle with untrained minds which resent all efforts to harness them. The attitude of the average student in the class-room, as I recall it, reminds me of our trotting colt, Beauty. She was so full of trotting blood that at times it boiled over into a desire for a mad run. We thought we had a world-beater, but when we put her on the track she could barely shade four minutes. An experienced trainer took her in hand, put foot-weights and straps on her and forced her to change her gait and concentrate her power. How that beautiful little horse did rage and chafe at this indignity! One could imagine her protest.

“Let me be free! Do I not know how to pick up my feet and use my limbs for speed? My father was a king of speed—my mother of royal blood! Set me free! Nature has given me natural swiftness—I do not need your art!”

But they held poor Beauty to it, though she chafed and lathered, and tried to throw herself down. Everywhere she met the weights, the straps and the cruel whip. At last she submitted to discipline and did as she was told. She clipped fully ninety seconds from her natural speed for a mile, but while she was forced to obey she had little respect for her trainer.

Could my college professors have controlled their human colts with weights, straps and whips, it is more than likely that education would have established a new record. I found my teachers quite willing to give the list of references from which their lectures were taken, and with these in hand the deaf student may read in advance of his class and be fully prepared. As a rule, he does not stand high in recitations, but excels in his written work. The truth is that for work which requires study and research, deafness is something of an advantage. It enables a student fully to concentrate his mind on the subject. It seems to me that most of the world’s imperishable thoughts have been born in the silence, or, at least, in solitude. The fact is that the human ear, for all the joy, comfort or power it may give, is at best a treacherous and undependable organ. Perhaps I cannot be classed as an authority on a subject which involves accurate hearing, but I know that the greatest danger in my business is that we are sometimes forced to rely upon spoken or hearsay evidence. I will not use statements in print until they are written out and signed. Too many people depend for their facts upon what others tell them. The brain may distort the message and memory may blur it. The wise deaf man learns to discount spoken testimony, and will act only upon printed or written words. I have had people come to me fully primed for an hour’s talk of complaint or scandal; I hand them a pad of paper and a pencil, settle back and say:

“Now tell me all about it.”

That pen or pencil is usually as efficient as a milk-tester in determining the surprisingly small amount of fat which exists in the milk of ordinary conversation.

You see, as I told you I should be likely to do, I have wandered away from the text. That is characteristic of the deaf, for we seldom hear the text, anyway. The woman I started to tell about managed to work through college and began treatment for her deafness. This promised some relief, when suddenly the great earthquake shook San Francisco. The shock and fright of that catastrophe destroyed her hearing entirely. I have heard of several cases where deafness came like this, in a flash. As one man repeated to me:

“At twenty-nine minutes past ten I actually heard a pin drop on the floor of my room. At half-past ten it would have been necessary to prick me to let me know that the pin was there.”