Being deaf, he lost one important syllable of the adjective, and something of his dignity in consequence. Never select a person without imagination as proxy for the deaf. In the city the colored porters who are found about public places are usually excellent telephone agents; colored waiters I have also found good. They are good-natured and imaginative, usually intelligent, and always wonderfully faithful.
CHAPTER XII
“No Music in Himself”
Music—Beethoven in the Silent World—And Milton—Our Emotional Desert—Dream Compensation—The “Sings” in the Old Farmhouse, and the “Rest” for the Weary—The Drunken Irish Singer in the Barber Shop.
“The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved by concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.