CHAPTER II
On the Road to Silence
The Nature of the Journey to the Silent Country—Substitutes for Perfect Silence—Sounds of Nature Companionable—The Direct Attack—“Just As I am”—Compensation in Idealized Memories—“Cut Out the Bitterness”—Reasons for Writing the Book—A Matter of Point of View, Concerning John Armstrong’s Possessions.
I think life has given me a certificate which qualifies me to act as guide and interpreter on the journey to the Silent Land. For forty years I have been traveling along the road to silence. I have seen some unfortunate people who were suddenly deprived of their hearing, as it seemed without warning. Fate did not give them even a chance to prepare for the death of sound. It was as if some cruel hand had suddenly dragged them into a prison, a form of living death through which the poor bewildered wretches must wander aimlessly until they could in some feeble way adjust themselves to the new conditions which we shall find in the world of silence. Happily my journey was not made in that way. I have wandered slowly and gently along the road, each year coming a little nearer to silence, yet working on so easily and unobtrusively that the way has not seemed hard and rough. I know every step of the road, and I can point out the landmarks as we pass along. You may be compelled to travel over the same route alone some day. Perhaps your feet are upon it even now, unknown to you. Take my advice and notice the milestones as you pass them.
Let’s not hurry. Let our journey be like one of those happy family wanderings in the old farm days, long before the age of gasoline. On a Sunday afternoon we would all start walking, on past the back of the farm. Father, mother and the baby, all would go. We could stop to drink from the spring, to rest under the pines, to stand on the hill looking off over the valleys. The beauty of the walk was that time was no object; our destination was nowhere in particular, and we always reached it. No one hears of those family trips in these days. We “go” now. The family, smaller than of old, will crowd into a car and go rushing about the country in an effort to cover as many miles as possible, and to do as little sight-seeing as may be during the rush. Now, we shall not hurry, and there will be no great objection to our leaving the road now and then to gather flowers or bright stones, or to watch a bird or a squirrel. We shall need all the pleasant memories we can think of when we arrive.
Very likely you have before now entered into a “solitude where none intrude,” and have thought yourself entirely alone in the silence. But you had not reached the real end of the road. You missed some of the familiar sounds of your everyday life, but there were substitutes. There was always the low growl of the ocean, the murmur of the wind among the trees, the cheerful ripple of the brook, the song of the birds, or some of the many sweet sounds of nature. It was not the silence which we know, nor were the voices which came to you harsh or distorted. They were clear and true, even though they were strange to you.
I did not realize how largely the habits of our life are bound up in sound until some years ago we hired a city woman to come and work in our farmhouse. We live in a lonely place. This woman spent one night with us. In the morning she came with terror in her eyes and begged to be taken back to New York.
“It’s so still here; I can’t sleep!”
It was true. Her ears had become so accustomed to the harsh noises of the city that every nerve and faculty had been tuned to them. The quiet of the country was as irksome to her as the constant city noises are annoying to the countryman, just from his silent hills. Perhaps you have awakened suddenly in the night in some quiet country place, let us say in the loneliness of Winter in the hill country. You looked from the window across the glittering snow to the dark pines which seemed to prison the farm and house. You fancied that you had finally reached the world of silence, and you were seized by a nameless terror as you imagined what would happen to you if sight were suddenly withdrawn. Then you heard the timbers of the house creak with the cold, the friendly wind sighed through the trees and around the corner of the house. There came faint chords of weird music as from an æolian harp when it passed over some wire fence. Or perhaps there came to you the faint step of some prowling animal. Then the terror vanished before these sounds of the night. For this is not the world which I ask you to enter with me. We are bound for the world of the deaf. I tell you in advance that it is a dull, drab world, without music or pleasant conversation, into which none of the natural tones of the human voice or the multitudinous sounds of nature can come. You must leave them all behind, and you will never realize how much they have meant to you until they are out of your reach. Could you readjust your life for a new adventure in this strange world?